Grow Your Own Butterflies With These Butterfly Habitats on Amazon | Magical Family Experience
Get Excited for These Caterpillar Habitats on Amazon – They’ll Give You Butterflies! 🦋
Butterfly habitats give children a chance to study nature and witness butterfly metamorphosis up close.
If studying the life cycle of a butterfly sounds like a fun activity your family would enjoy, here are five of the best butterfly habitats available for purchase right now on Amazon.
Keep reading for some helpful tips to remember while raising your caterpillars to butterflies!
The Insect Lore Butterfly Garden Habitat is Amazon’s #1 best-seller.
Insect Lore’s Butterfly Garden comes with five live caterpillars and two butterfly journals your children can use for keeping track of their observations as they watch and learn. Insect Lore also sells caterpillar “refills” so your kids can keep studying Painted Lady butterflies as they reuse their habitat over and over again!
Keep in mind that these need to be delivered when the weather is between 55 and 85 degrees.
Here are a few options to choose from:
- Insect Lore Butterfly Garden Home School Edition with Live Caterpillars – $31.05 shipped (regularly $36.48)
- Butterfly Garden: Original Habitat w/ Two Live Cups of Caterpillars & STEM Journal – $34 shipped (regularly $42.99)
- Insect Lore Butterfly Garden Home School Edition w/ Caterpillar Certificate – $35.14 (regularly $39.99)
This sturdy Butterfly Terrarium has two zipped entries.
This professional-grade pop-up butterfly habitat is made with a high-quality tight-weave mesh that is breathable, durable, and easy to clean. We love that it has an extra zipped opening on the side for easy access when there are chrysalises hanging from the top panel.
A big collapsible habitat will give your butterflies room to grow.
This collapsible mesh terrarium pops up to nearly two feet tall, giving your butterflies plenty of room to stretch their wings. It’s big enough to house a potted plant, which is nice because caterpillars prefer to feed on living foliage rather than fallen leaves.
This highly-rated Pop-Up Butterfly Cage is an affordable option.
Trasfit’s Pop-Up Insect and Butterfly Cage is just the right size for beginning butterfly enthusiasts. It has mesh on all sides for superior breathability, loops for hanging it up, and a large zipper opening for easy release when it’s time to let your butterflies go.
This hanging Mini Butterfly Habitat is a real space-saver.
At just 11′ x 7.5″, this butterfly habitat is sure to fit just about any space. One side of this hanging terrarium is made from clear vinyl, for a clear view of what’s happening inside. It can also be hung up out of reach from curious fingers or set on a table-top for easy observation.
Tips for raising caterpillars to butterflies inside a habitat:
- Most butterfly habitats do not come with caterpillars, so plan to order them separately if needed.
- Make sure that your area has a suitable climate and appropriate food for the type of butterfly you’d like to raise and release. Many of the caterpillars sold on Amazon are the Painted Lady species, which can thrive in most environments.
- Pay attention to daytime temperatures in your area and only order your caterpillars when temperatures are expected to remain between 55ºF and 85ºF. Caterpillars may not survive shipping in extreme heat or cold.
- Avoid handling the caterpillars and butterflies at any stage of development. Their soft bodies and sensitive skin make them easy to harm by accident.
- Plan to release your butterflies on a calm, warm, sunny day. Mid-morning is best so that they have time to feed and to find a safe spot before nighttime.
- Support your child’s love of both reading and science by giving them a book about butterflies to go along with their habitat!
Keep your kids learning all summer long with these fun science and craft kits on Amazon!
My daughter was gifted the first one for her birthday this past April (6 years old) she loved it. All of the caterpillars lived (5 of them) and grew so fast. She loved watching them turn to butterflies. It was hard to say goodbye. The last one to be released landed on her hand and didn’t want to fly on. Made for some beautiful memories and photos!
How neat! Thanks so much for sharing your experience! SO glad to hear what great memories you could make!
we also have the top insect lore one. We’ve had it for about 4 years and use it every year. My kids look forward to doing this every spring 🙂
We also have that one (top one) and we love it. My son got it when he was 7 and now he is 16. Both his little sisters used it and we still use it when we find a lost caterpillar 🐛 here and there. He has even used it to catch lizards in our yard and released them down the road by a creek, saving them from getting killed by the lawnmower. Great quality since it has lasted 9 years and we have used it a lot. You can also re order the eggs and watch them hatch witch we have done twice. Every time we receive an order all of them are able to make it and hatch so they are great quality also.
Oh wow! Thanks for the helpful comment, Jackie! Good to know what a hit it has been through the years!
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Yes I have insect lore one and we love it
🙌
My daughter would love this for her birthday next month !! I tried ordering it and it doesn’t ship to my area 😟
We had the insect lore brand and just released our 5 painted lady butterflies on Sunday. It was very interesting and educational, even as an adult.
how long does it take to turn into the butterfly ?
From egg to butterfly approximately 1 month.
We have gotten the first one several times. The first time was about a year ago when both girls went into a butterfly phase. And the a couple of months ago I got two more kits for both their school class when they were studying habitats. They are sooo much fun!
If you grow milkweed plants (native or tropical), the Monarch butterfly will come and lay eggs on it. We started with buying painted lady caterpillars before. We’ve since raised Monarch and Swallowtail caterpillars just by planting the host plants. It’s fun to see the life cycle.
My daughter is now 17, but we did this when she was about 5. It was amazing.. until the end. When it was time to let the butterflies go, she went into a complete meltdown, cried and cried as she was so sad and scared to let them go. She wanted to raise and take care of them and make sure they would not get hurt. Needless to say, we never purchased again, lol. But it was an amazing to watch the whole cycle. Learning to let go at the end was a hard experience you may want to prepare them for. But who knows, I am sure my daughter is in the minority, but hehe we sure were blindsighted by her reaction at the end!
We’re doing this right now! Our caterpillars just formed their chrysalises and will be moved into the butterfly habitat in two days. We have enjoyed watching the caterpillars grow (so quickly) and can’t wait too see them turn into butterflies!
We did this and all six lived….until we released them and a bird swooped down and ate one right when it flew out. It was a way to explain the circle of life lol.
For those of you that do this every year, what/where is the best deal to buy just the caterpillars? I bought the whole kit last year and my kids LOVED it!! I would also like to try one of the lady bug kits, if anyone has a recommendation for one of those! Thank you all so much!