Insect LoreButterfly Garden - 8" Habitat | 1 Cup of Live Baby Caterpillars | Life Cycle Figurines, Stickers, Wind up, Mini Habitat | Birthday or Teacher Gift Set

Very durable. Have used this 3 times just by purchasing the caterpillars again. This is such a good gift for kids. Amazing value. And it’s so fun to learn about butterflies!

I'm so happy with this kit! It's marketed towards children and at-home schooling but I wanted to provide an experience for my mother who has Alzheimer's. She always loved butterflies when I was growing up and they were like her "spirit animal". So, when I saw this, I knew I'd have to try to see if I could engage her and get photos of the experience for her. I'm so glad I did and it worked so well! I opted to get two cups of caterpillars because I wanted plenty to have for photo ops. All ten of our caterpillars arrived alive but one little fella didn't make it to the chrysalis stage. But all nine that did, hatched! It was so cool watching them and super easy to care for them. After emerging, I gave them sliced bananas and strawberries and waited for a non-rainy day for our little release photo session. I got very lucky that my mom was having a good day and we released them all today! Having nine really helped because seven of them took off (one at a time) as I got them out in my cupped hand to place on a strawberry slice on her hand. But two hung out for quite a while so I got so many good photos! She was so enthralled and talked to each one, cooing and telling them how beautiful they were. I had to hold back tears so I could focus. Literally. I definitely recommend and we will get more later! :-) PS. There is a GREAT adorable YouTube video on the lifecycle of the painted lady butterfly as told by four siblings under ten. The "Quad Squad". Such a great video for kids and ALZ people alike!

Two things to reiterate from others up front:1. The expected arrival date is likely not accurate. Ours also showed up about a week early, while we were out of town.2. They are likely not dead. When you first see them, they're very tiny and likely won't move at all - maybe even for days. Don't worry - just continue to let it sit like the instructions say and everything will be just fine. About 2 days in, I was still certain they were toast.On to the actual review. Bought these for my 7 yo, and she absolutely loved them. Frankly, the whole family did. We'd each stop by a few times a day to check in on them. We also kept them at the dinner table so we watched them while we ate.I will say - don't expect these to ever be lively / energetic. Its not like a pet hamster or a bird that you'll sit and watch them play around. We very rarely saw any actual movement. But they did absolutely move around as they ate through the stuff in the bottom, spun webs, and grew at an amazing rate. The provided instructions were absolutely 100% dead on for every single stage.We just released them tonight. All 10 completed the transformation and were fluttering (clumsily) around the habitat, eager to go explore. The most amazing thing is that while 9 of them immediately took off in all directions, the 10th one stayed in the habitat. My daughter reached in with her hand to let it crawl onto her (which it immediately did), and she pulled it out. It crawled around on her hands for probably 3 or 4 minutes before it finally tool flight. My daughter was absolutely thrilled by the experience.I would 100% reccomend this to anyone interested.

Ame el producto y muy completo

I ordered 2 of these. One for each set of grandchildren. One item only had 2 butterflies that developed. The other was fine.

I got the 2 cup version. For some reason it was $3 cheaper than the 1 cup version, not that I'm complaining about that or anything, but that made it impossible not to get the 2 cup version :-)The fact that this kit comes with live caterpillars from Amazon is amazing. Most other kits come with a coupon to mail back to the company to get the caterpillars, which involves waiting twice. I was a bit skeptical at first because everything came at once, and I was thinking that the caterpillars may not survive shipping. However, the company does offer a guarantee that at least 3 out of the 5 caterpillars in each cup will survive. They definitely exceeded their guarantee in our case: all 10 caterpillars survived shipping, all 10 turned into chrysalides, all 10 turned into butterflies, and none of them had deformed wings.I definitely think timing of the order had a lot to do with their survival. I ordered at the beginning of April, but the whole country was experiencing a spring heatwave that whole week, with temperatures in my area being in the high 60's to low 70's. I believe that if you ordered this during a cold snap during the winter with temps in the teens, or an extreme heatwave during the summer with temps in the high 90's - low 100's then the results will be drastically different.This has been noted in other reviews, but I thought it was important to bring it up again: The estimated shipping time for the kit was 2 weeks when I ordered it, but it showed up in 5 days (ordered on Monday, received on Friday). While I appreciated the short shipping time, if you are planning this as a gift, or expecting it to show up on the later side of 2 weeks then you will probably be surprised. My order shipped from California, and I am in New England, so I bet shipping times will be even shorter the further out west you are.We will probably be buying this again next spring!

My kids love this kit! Such a fun activity