Insect LoreInsect Lore Butterfly Garden Kit, Painted Lady Butterfly Kit with Voucher for Live Caterpillars, Butterfly Habitat, STEM Journal & More

This set is genuinely one of the most impressive educational tools available for kids. It effectively demonstrates the butterfly life cycle, allowing children to witness the transformation from caterpillar to butterfly firsthand. The package includes an engaging workbook that is filled with fun activities and informative content, along with a variety of colourful stickers to enhance the learning experience.Additionally, the set comes with a valuable coupon that enables you to obtain live butterflies for observation, and there's the option to order extra ones if you’d like to continue the learning process or if you're captivated by the cycle. I’ve personally enjoyed this set so much that I’m now on my third round of butterflies, and I can wholeheartedly say that it’s worth every penny. This product is a must-have for any family looking to inspire a love for nature and science in their children!

We are in the chrysalis phase, and my kids are loving this. We homeschool, so they have loved that they can regularly check on the changes in their caterpillars and write in the included science journal throughout the day. We are very pleased with this purchase, and I can definitely see my kids asking to do this again in the future.

The caterpillars do not come with the cage. You need to order the caterpillars online and they are shipped to you. They are "free", but shipping is $8.95!A few weeks after posting the above: I must admit that the caterpillars arrived carefully packaged and after placing them in the cage and following instructions, all turned into "butterflies"! So, my review goes from one star to five stars.

Best gift for kids!!

This was great and fun for my 5 yr old. It came with everything you need EXCEPT the caterpillars. When it comes, the box contains a voucher, you go to bug lore and order your caterpillars separately. They are for free except shipping. So price check.. maybe buying the kit and caterpillars with shipping directly from bug lore might save you a few dollars rather than buying the kit on Amazon and then still having to pay shipping for the bugs. Everything else was great, All 5 caterpillars turned into butterflies. When releasing them my son got them to climb on his hands and let each one out individually, he really liked this. I only took off a star simply bc I didn’t realize it didn’t come with the caterpillars until the package arrived and it was for an Easter gift so the no caterpillars was kinda lame- they weren’t here in time for Easter. I’m sure it says it somewhere in the description but not obviously or loud enough for me to catch it when I bought this.

Caterpillars sold separately

Love this kit! I have it in my classroom and the students love a little bit of nature indoors. Great for part of a small, reading, writing, science unit for end of the year.

Angry rant follows. I've used these cages (and several others by different manufacturers) for many years. I've probably purchased a dozen of this exact model, many from Amazon. These are, as the Amazon description says, "A family and classroom favorite for almost 50 years." They can be bleached, stored, and reused. From year to year, the dimensions sometimes change a bit or the fabric component has a different pattern, but until now, I have found the quality of this Insect Lore cage to be excellent.However, the two cages I just bought do NOT have the clear, vinyl lid still pictured, but rather -- for the first time ever -- super-crummy, lightweight, slippery, nasty, horrible, no-good MESH lids! This has been terrible for my monarchs and a real annoyance for me this season. Like many larvae, these little guys like to wander about, spreading their silk around the "roof" before settling down in earnest to place a serious silk button and screw in their wee cremasters for a good, safe hang before pupating. With the old vinyl lids, I never had a problem gingerly unzipping the flap to maintain my Late Johnnies who were still eating while their siblings continued to dangle safely and securely. No worries: the silk stayed in place. Insect Lore should know that a critical function of a semi-stiff, clear, zippable plastic lid is that you can DO such maintenance. It is essential to be able to remove frass or swap out fodder while leaving attached chrysalises secure. Unfortunately, this lousy mesh does not provide a proper surface for secure adhesion of the silk, nor anything else. The entire RAFT of silk has come unstuck on each of the new cages. A couple of chrysalises have fallen as a result. Now I must hang entire batches by pinning -- a technique I don't happen to prefer, but I guess it will do until the season is over.The new mesh lids do not allow me to tape up a fallen chrysalis, a method I like a lot when a cremaster cannot easily be tied by thread. The mesh is so slippery that I can't even slap on the adhesive office notes I use to track dates, numbers, and instars. They just fall off. I have to PIN on the bl**dy notes now. Agh! More pins!The original design allowed perfectly sufficient airflow, so I can't see that as an argument for the change. What on earth was Insect Lore thinking? Cost? Just charge me a dollar more, please. I'm returning these, but can't do it until the season is over because I need the real estate.I'll close by saying that if you've read this far (gosh, I'm sorry) AND if you only plan to use this cage once to rear a cup of Painted Lady larvae you got with a coupon, then you may be much happier with this new version of the product than I am. Your larvae, if they are of similar size, are likely to pupate at about the same time, and you're probably using that insta-food in the jar they gave you (it looks like yellow goo). You might be ignoring the frass (caterpillar poop), because it's so difficult to remove from the jar. If that's so, you won't be doing any real maintenance. You won't be hanging fallen chrysalises nor slapping on a dozen Post-It notes for record-keeping, as I do. So my advice to you would be to buy this silly thing and ignore my rant -- just DON'T mess with the zipper once you see those chrysalises hanging, if you let them do it on the cage lid, outside their jar.