• Home
  • Cooking
  • Frugal Living
  • Home Management
  • Homeschooling
  • Real Life

The Happy Housewife™ :: Home Schooling

homeschool tips, printables, curriculum reviews, and more

  • Printables
  • Themes
  • Projects
  • Life
  • Our Curriculum
  • Curriculum Reviews

Raising Caterpillars and Butterflies

by Toni Herrbach

1shares
  • Pin
  • Share

by contributing writer Marci

One of the coolest science projects of our school year was raising caterpillars and butterflies. We used Nancy Larson Science this year with my second grader (loved it!) and the butterfly kit was written into the curriculum.

raising butterfly larva

Our butterfly kit came from Insect Lore. They sent a habitat, instructions, and a card to mail in to order caterpillars at the appropriate time of year for your location. The caterpillars arrive in a plastic cup with a lid and all they need to survive until they form their crysalises (more on this later).

growing caterpillars

When the caterpillars arrive, they are only an inch or so long. Within days, they grow to 2 -2 1/2 inches long. It is quite a change! This is the larva stage of butterflies. Caterpillars have to be the least gross larva of all the insects (just saying!).

After about 10 days of nothing but eating and growing, the caterpillars find their way to the top of the jar, attach themselves to a paper lining the lid and hang upside down. Within a few hours, the caterpillar is a hardened crysalis. Yes, crysalis, not a cocoon. A cocoon is spun with silk by moths. Butterflies do not spin silk, so they form a crysalis.

When the last caterpillar has formed their crysalis, we opened the lid, carefully removed the paper with the crysalises hanging from it and pinned it to the side of the habitat and waited.

It takes about 10 days for the butterflies to emerge from their crysalises. We sat the habitat on the kitchen island so we wouldn’t  miss a thing. The kids watched each day for any movement at all. However, each of our 5 butterflies emerged while we were gone or in the other room!

butterflies

Our beautiful butterflies stayed in their habitat for about a week. We fed them flowers laced with a little sugar water and a few pieces of cut orange.

releasing butterflies

When it was time to release the butterflies, we went out into the yard, my son opened the the top of the habitat and one by one they flew away – except for one. One butterfly had a crumpled wing and couldn’t fly. We used the opportunity to get up close and personal.

butterfly tongue

Have you ever seen a butterfly tongue?! It is so long and curled!

The life span of a butterfly is only about 2 weeks. In that time, they fly, drink nectar and lay eggs that will hatch into caterpillars. The entire butterfly life cycle takes only 6 weeks.

Watching our caterpillars metamorphosis into butterflies was a great experience that the kids want to repeat next year. It’s a great way to study the life cycle of insects or for young learners to build on a literature study, like The Hungry Caterpillar.

Here is a link to a time lapse video on the life cycle of a painted lady butterfly using a kit from insect lore just like we did.

Have you ever raised butterflies?

  • More Homeschool Science from Marci
  • See our Homeschool Curriculum Review for Nancy Larson Science here!
1shares
  • Pin
  • Share

Comments | Be the first!

« Fun with Eric Carle
Eric Carle: The Book Nook »

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recipe Rating




STAY UPDATED!

Get every article delivered to your inbox!

CONNECT WITH ME

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Homeschool Projects & Experiments

Homeschool Projects & Experiments

Homeschool Garden Ideas on Pinterest

Recent Posts

  • 101 Things to Do on a Snow Day with Kids
  • Tips for Planning Your Homeschool Day
  • Properties of Water Experiments
  • Sight Word Bingo (Free Printable)
  • Lapbook Ideas
  • Resurrection Eggs with Bible Verses: Easter Craft & Lesson
  • How to Homeschool (even temporarily)

Unbiased Homeschool Reviews!

CONNECT WITH ME

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

RSS Manage Your Home

CATEGORIES

ARCHIVES

STAY UPDATED!

Get every article delivered to your inbox!

Snow Day Activities for Kids

101 Things to Do on a Snow Day with Kids

By Toni Herrbach 3 Comments

Tips for Planning Your Homeschool Day

By Toni Herrbach 11 Comments

homeschool curriculum reviews

CONNECT WITH ME

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Copyright © 2025 · Tasteful theme by Restored 316

Privacy Policy

HOME | CONTACT | ADVERTISING & PR | DISCLOSURE | PRIVACY POLICY

© 2025 – TheHappyHousewife.com. All rights reserved. | Design by Joy @ Five J's Design | Site maintenance by Klong Designs