The Very Hungry Caterpillar Butterfly Garden

November 14, 2011 By Rachel

The Very Hungry Caterpillar Butterfly Garden

Children like what they know. That is, they appreciate familiarity, and recognition of favorite characters is one area where we commonly see this. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of having most television characters all over my house – I don’t exactly know why; there’s just something about it. But book characters – now that’s a different story. I guess I like for my children to be familiar enough with good books that they recognize the characters and settings.

One such children’s book is Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar. We have this in board book form (in both English and Spanish, actually), so that the little ones can’t tear it (them) up as we read. We love Eric Carle’s delightful illustrations and educational stories.

Children who are familiar with The Very Hungry Caterpillar will enjoy this special planter from DuneCraft. The planter itself is decorated with illustrations from the book. Even better, the seeds are for butterfly bushes! You can plant them indoors in the planter, or you can plant them outside. (As it’s winter here now, or nearly so, we planted ours in the planter for now, and will probably transplant to the garden come spring.)

I wish the instructions had been slightly clearer, as I think I planted ours upside-down. It still works the way I planted it, though, and I am looking forward to seeing the seeds sprout. I’m also looking forward to transplanting the plants in the spring to attract butterflies, and having some hands-on, observational science lessons with the girls!

This would make a great gift for any child. Add it to a copy of the book for an atypical gift presentation!

$14.99
(Also see the I Love You Bean and the Rainforest Biosphere.)

Back to the Gift Guide

Disclosure: DuneCraft provided me with a complimentary planter set to facilitate this review. As always, all opinions are entirely my own.