Life Cycle of a Butterfly Printables

As part of our homeschool science we observed the butterfly life cycle. I even put together a free butterfly life cycle worksheets to teach preschoolers and homeschool kids about this amazing metamorphoses that takes place. This is a wonderful science experiment to witness in person!

Butterfly Printable

We had SO much fun observing our caterpillars turn into butterflies! I found myself checking their progress many times a day too! As part of our butterfly garden kit we received 5 caterpillars in a container with holes poked in the top and a gel covering the bottom that nourished them.

Whether you are a parent, teacher, homeschooler, daycare, grandparent, or preschool – you will love this simple and fun animal life cycles activity for toddlers, preschoolers, pre k, kindergartners, first grade, grade 2 and grade 3.

Butterfly Observation

Day 1 – The caterpillars arrived and are in the larva stage. They are 3/4″ long and moving around inside the cup.

Day #4 – Still in the larva stage but the caterpillars have been eating the food in the container they were shipped in and are now 1 1/2″ long. There are lots of little balls of poop on the bottom – EW!

Day #7 – Still in the Larva Stage. The caterpillars have all moved to the lid of teh cup and are hanging upside down. They look like little leaves of fish hooks up there.

Day #8 – Some of the caterpillars have finished spinning their cocoons and have antered the Pupa stage.

Once all the butterflies are in a cocoon we opend the lid carefully and moved the white paper they were attached to and clipped it inside teh butterfly net so we could watch and wait for them to become butterflies.

We moved the caterpillars to our butterfly garden in preparation for their hatching. Minnie loved to watch them and see if they were butterflies yet. On Day #12 two of the five caterpillars started shaking and we thought they were hatching…. but not yet!

Watching our newly hatched butterflies!

Day#14 -Butterflies at last! We noticed the red liquid (a result from the color on their wings) and waited excitedly for the remainder of the caterpillars to hatch.

We are enjoying watching the butterflies flapping around inside their garden. We put a sliced orange in for the butterflies to drink. Did you know butterflies don’t actually eat, they just drink through their straw like sucker.

We know we need to release the butteflies out side soon….

Butterfly Garden Fieldtrip

My favorite site for getting information and showing my kids pictures was The Children’s Butterfly Site.

Life Cycle of a Butterfly Printables

I made the {free} Hatching Butterflies Observation Notebook to go along with our Butterfly Unit. It has information on the butterfly lifecycle, facts about butterflies, and space for your child to write observations and/or pictures along your scientific process. I hope this is helpful to other Preschool and Homeschooling families.

Simply scroll to the bottom of the post, under the terms of use, and click on the text link that says >> Download <<. The pdf file will open in a new window for you to save the freebie. Now print the pages on plain printer paper. There is just a sprinkiling of color to make it extra fun for kids.

There is space for children to write down what day it is, what stage the butterfly is in it’s lifecyle and record any observations they can make.  The book also includes an illustration of a butterfly life cycle for kids to look at.