Free Butterfly Life Cycle Printable

This butterfly life cycle printable is a great addition to your butterfly activities for preschoolers and kindergarten kids! You can also integrate it into your spring lesson plans or your next animal life cycles unit.

No matter when you use it, the printable butterfly life cycle gives your students the chance to practice important early learning skills. They also get to show off what they’ve learned about butterflies!

On top of that, the butterfly printable is incredibly low-prep. You can easily have it ready for the kids tomorrow. And there are multiple ways to use it with the kids.

Oh, and don’t forget to request your own copy of this printable! You can do that via the form that’s near the bottom of this post.

Butterfly Life Cycle Printable

Below I’ll share some prepping tips, as well as multiple ways to use the life cycle of a butterfly printable with your students. As always, please keep in mind that you can make adjustments to my ideas based on your own preferences or the needs of your students!

How to Prep the Printable Butterfly Life Cycle Activity

How to Use the Butterfly Life Cycle Printable with Kids

I think this printable is pretty straightforward, but there are a few different ways to use it with your students! Overarchingly, it’s meant to show the life cycle of a butterfly, from egg to adult.

The first way is great for children who already have some steady scissor skills. Let the kids cut the life cycle cards out on their own. Then they can glue the cards onto the life cycle mat. Since there are only four life cycle cards, this is also good practice for children still working on using scissors. You just need to be there to assist as needed.

You can also make it a reusable experience! Place the mat in a dry erase pocket (or laminate it) and laminate the life cycle cards. If you want to get really fancy, add some hook-and-loop dots on the laminated mat and the back of the cards. Then place these in the science center for independent practice.

Keep in mind, it doesn’t really matter where you start since it’s a cycle. As long as the order is egg followed by caterpillar, followed by chrysalis, followed by butterfly, etc.

I highly recommend having some non-fiction butterfly books available during this time. The children can reference the books as needed.

Other Ideas for the Butterfly Life Cycle Pages

The ideas above are the most straightforward way to use this printable, but you can definitely try out some other ways as well!

For example, your students can also forgo the cutting and pasting entirely. Give the kids some crayons or markers. Then challenge them to draw the appropriate illustrations in each box on the butterfly life cycle printable page.

Or consider placing the laminated life cycle cards in a butterfly sensory bin. Challenge the children to find all of the needed pieces to place on the life cycle mat. If you create a colorful bin like we did, it can even turn into a counting and sorting activity! The kids can place the sensory materials next to the appropriate life cycle cards, counting how many they find.

If appropriate, you can also use the butterfly pages as a jumping off for a writing activity. Encourage the children to reference the labels on the life cycle cards as they create a story about a butterfly’s life. For children just beginning to write, they can draw pictures of each stage and label those pictures by copying the labels on the cards.

What Skills Are Being Practiced with the Butterfly Printable?

Plus, there’s the chance for a lot of conversation as the children participate in this activity! I’m always down for a good conversation with a preschool or kindergarten child! They have some great observations to share, as well as the best imaginations.

Don’t forget to request your own copy of the butterfly printable. You can find the form near the bottom of this post, right above the last image.

When To Use the Butterfly Life Cycle Printable

Oh, you can use the life cycle of a butterfly printable at so many different points in your year! Add it to your spring lesson plans, your next butterfly unit, or as part of an animal life cycles theme. Of course, you can also use it just because! Maybe you have a lot of kids enamored with butterflies!

Personally, I think this printable activity would be great near the end of a unit about butterflies. Read lots of butterfly books, watch some real-life videos about butterflies, and maybe even watch the process in-person. If you have one nearby, a visit to a butterfly garden would be amazing, too!

All of that to say, this is meant as a way for kids to practice what they’ve learned about the life cycle of a butterfly. So it makes sense to add near the end of your plans.

More Butterfly Life Cycle Activities for Kids

Butterfly Lesson Plans

We created my sister site, Preschool Teacher 101, with the express purpose of making teachers’ lives easier! We have hundreds of fully-developed, done-for-you early childhood resources ranging from lesson plans to classroom management guides to dramatic play sets and much more.

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