Butterfly growing is really simple and utterly entrancing.
My mini tutorial explains you everything you need to learn how to grow butterflies at home, where to buy a butterfly growing kit and what to feed growing caterpillars as you watch them transform into beautiful wild and free butterflies.
*This post is couple of years old but as we continually lurch from lockdown to isolation due to Coronavirus, it’s a perfect activity for families and children; indoor nature connection, without the need for a garden.
Are you looking for things to do with the kids in the holidays? Kids need nature more than ever and butterfly growing at home is a genuinely transformational activity for animal lovers to try this summer!
It’s a favourite indoor kids nature activity, allowing a truly up-close insight into the fascinating life cycle of butterflies, witnessing metamorphosis in your own home. Wow!
Children LOVE it; watch their expressions when releasing the butterflies.
What Is Butterfly Growing?
Butterfly growing is literally looking after caterpillars in your house until they transform into butterflies to be released into the wild. Watching the life cycle is amazing.
To learn how to grow butterflies at home, read on.
These are butterflies I’ve photographed in our garden or the wild
How to grow butterflies at home
Simply buy a butterfly growing kit (link at bottom) with live caterpillars, special food and a habitat net. Set it up and watch them grow.
Top tip
Buy an i-Spy butterfly spotting guide (scroll down) – an inspiring and really cheap little book that will encourage children to look out for butterflies on their travels, and tick off the ones you grow at home (usually Painted Lady butterflies in the UK but Monarch caterpillars are often sent in the US).
You will need:
- a butterfly growing kit (see bottom of page)
- a secure and safe shelf to store the butterfly net
- patience
What to do:
1. Buy caterpillars
A lidded pot arrives in the post, (or box if you buy the full kit), filled with ‘sludge’ (caterpillar food) and 5 or 6 tiny live Painted Lady caterpillars.
Pop the cup on a safe shelf and watch the caterpillars munching until they become chrysalides hanging from the lid of the cup. It can take a couple of weeks.
2. Move chrysalides to habitat net
After a couple of days carefully move the chrysalides and lid onto the ‘chrysalis station’ and place it securely in your butterfly habitat net.
3. Be patient!
The whole process takes two to three weeks and is truly captivating.
4. Meet Your Butterflies
Wait and watch as the chrysalides transform into butterflies! If you’re lucky you might get to see the butterflies actually emerge though ours always seem to sneak out over night.
5. Feed the newly emerged butterflies
Feed with fruit and nectar as per the instructions.
6. Release Into the Wild
Once the butterflies have built a little strength, release into the wild within 2 or 3 days.
A friend bought us our butterfly kit and we’ve successfully grown three lots of Painted Lady caterpillars as well as lending the habitat net for friends to use too.
Crumpled wings
The below photo is not long after emergence but we missed the actual event! Notice how soft and crumpled the wings are at first. It doesn’t really look like a butterfly. And the red substance isn’t blood but a liquid that comes out during emergence.
Caterpillars from the wild
We grew 6 Tortoiseshell butterflies from caterpillars (wild-collected in an area of nettles in a park that were about to be strimmed). These hungry munchers ate a whole stem of fresh nettles every day in order to grow large enough to pupate so it was quite a responsibility! Thankfully all of them survived to be released into the wild.
I don’t recommend taking caterpillars from the wild as many are protected and you not only need to know exactly what they eat (often just one plant for one species), you need to have a ready and fresh supply of it and this could mean removing protected wildflower species from the wild too.
Do a Butterfly Survey
If you don’t want to grow butterflies but have lots in your area, why not encourage the kids to identify and record what they see in a garden butterfly survey with Butterfly Conservation?
Attract Butterflies to Your Garden
Alternatively, attract butterflies to your own garden by creating a wildlife area with wildflower seeds and pollinator(bee and butterfly)-friendly plants. You don’t need much space – we plant wildflower seeds in a recycled wheelbarrow container, which looks pretty as well as being great for conservation. Find out how to make one here: create a mini meadow in a wheelbarrow
Kids Nature Activities
For more nature connection activities, check out the Kids of the Wild’s gardening pages and read our indoor nature activity suggestions. Try this simple coconut bird feeder tutorial too.
For ongoing isolation activities don’t forget to follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and sign up to the website to receive the latest posts to your inbox.
Wild wishes that your hungry caterpillars turn into beautiful, brilliant butterflies!
Things To Do In The Holidays
For more indoor and outdoor activities for your kids in the holidays read: –
Home – 17 ways to connect with nature at home
Garden – go wild in the garden – 25 ways to connect with nature in your garden or yard
Outdoors – 30 super cool ideas for outdoor family fun
Why? – 11 reasons to get into the wild now
Get The Gear
Click images to find the best prices at Amazon.
BUTTERFLY GROWING KIT
i-Spy butterfly spotting book
CATERPILLAR REFILL GIFT VOUCHER
(to purchase caterpillars at the correct time of year)
CATERPILLAR REFILL CUP
(to purchase live caterpillars direct to your door)
HUNGRY CATERPILLAR BOARD BOOK
SEED BALL WILDFLOWERS
UK BUTTERFLY GUIDE
What a lovely post! I haven’t tried this yet but I’d love to. I will need to have a look at where you get them from. Thanks for the idea! 🙂 x
Thanks Su, glad to have provided some inspiration and I can thoroughly recommend it.
Such a lovely guide and sensible advice on how best to grow your own butterflies from the wild. It isn’t something we have done as it takes longer than one holiday stay but one I think all kids should be exposed to. Do schools still do this? I remember mine watching butterflies develop at primary school.
Thank you for sharing with me on #CountryKids
There are large kits for schools to use but I’ve not yet heard of a school near us that’s done it. There are so many things schools should do. Maybe I’ll run for Education Minister!! Thanks for hosting your lovely linky x
We’ve done this for a few years with Painted Ladies and the My Living World set, it’s a great way for children to learn I think #countrykids
I haven’t seen the Living World kits. Will have to take a look. It’s such a great activity to develop nature understanding in little ones. Thanks for dropping by
Ohh yes, I’m sure my girls would love the idea of growing their own butterflies. My challenge would then be to convince them to let them go! Mich x #CountryKids
Yes, letting go is tough. Though talking about their need to be free and fly in the air did the trick our end!
What a brilliant activity, amazing to see the butterflies emerge from the cacoon (it’s a pretty tricky idea to grasp afterall). I’m not sure where we could put a net without our cats trying to toy with it but I’ve going to investigate as my 6 year old would love to do this
It really is wonderful to watch the metamorphosis. If you’re there at the right time there’s all sorts of shaking and twitching before they emerge. Fascinating. You could put the net on a high shelf somewhere? Thanks for dropping by
We just successfully 4 butterflies into the garden only last weekend. One of them had a folded wing, so not sure it’ll make it. It’s been a fascinating process for all of us, and in this warm weather, it’s taken about 3.5 weeks to complete. We’ll definitely do it again!
#CountryKids
So glad yours transformed too. It’s such a clever idea for observing nature at close hand.
We’ve always wanted to do this, would be worried I wouldn’t want to let them go 😉 #CountryKids
It is tough, we’ve had tears at release time. You can almost tell in one of the photos, but giving them the freedom to fly always wins hearts in the end!
Some terrific ideas for encouraging butterflies to the garden!
Thanks for having a read. These are great kits for kids to try
I have always fancied having a go at this – and had no idea that the food type was dependent on the actual butterfly. Our garden is a paradise for bees and butterflies (full of stinging nettles and the like) and there’s quite a few beautiful butterflies about at the moment.
Interesting eh! The butterflies themselves use any flowers for nectar but the caterpillars are generally reliant on a particular species of plant for food hence the Cabbage White for example! We’ve had hardly any butterflies so far this year.
We’ve just ordered our caterpillars and I’m looking forward to watching them grow into butterflies with Sophie. I didn’t realise that different species of caterpillar tend to focus on one type of food though. We’ve seen a lot of butterflies in our garden this year and I love watching them. #countrykids
We’ve yet to do this activity but are familiar with the book The Hungry Caterpillar. #CountryKids
It’s well worth buying a kit and believe me it’s amazing the amount of food a caterpillar gets through – though not so pronounced when it’s the sludge in a cup. I couldn’t believe the amount of nettles 6 caterpillars got through a day!
This looks like a lot of fun to do with kids! I tried growing butterflies with one of my classes once for science. Thank you for sharing at the #mygloriousgardens July link party!
Thanks for co-hosting, it’s a great link party. I bet the kids loved growing butterflies at school. I think it should be on all curriculums.
We do this in our year 2 class! We love it and so do the children. They get so excited when they see a butterfly emerging and it makes it real for them when they have to release them into the garden. Lovely idea this and I love that you shared this with us on the July #MyGloriousGardens! Thanks for joining in, xx
Great to hear that it’s being done in school, it’s such a great nature lesson for children and a lovely connection to the garden. Thanks for hosting your fab linky again
Thanks for joining.
I agree. It’s such a fun thing but the kids get loads out of it.
Love this so much. So inspiring! Well look into this for my older children… 12 and 10 and 47!
Excellent. I often find the 47 year old kids enjoy some of these things as much as the kids! Let me know how it goes if you get one, it’s utterly absorbing to watch
its fun