Life Cycle of a Butterfly Worksheet

Learning about life cycles can be a wonderful opportunity for preschool students. This butterfly worksheet covers both fun & learning with simple cut and paste activities, alongside simple handwriting practice. There is just something so exciting about the possibility of change, and with all the extremely different stages in the butterfly life cycle, it is the perfect focus of a preschool science unit.

There is just something so exciting about the possibility of change, and with it’s unique developmental stages, the butterfly is a wonderful creature to study for preschoolers. Even the youngest of students can appreciate how drastically a creature, like the butterfly, has to change for each stage.

To start this activity, each student will need our Butterfly Life Cycle Workeet. This is available in color or black at white at the bottom of this post. The black and white version is handy if you don’t like to print color ink, or if you have a student who is set on coloring their own butterflies.

First, instruct students to cut a straight line across the bottom dashed line. This will make things much easier as students can then cute each square from a smaller strip. Be sure you take the time to instruct any students who are having difficulty holding the scissors. This project is designed to help work those fine motor muscles, so be encouraging and don’t rush this part of the activity.

Once your student has their stage all cut out, encourage them to place them (without gluing) around the circle where they “think” the stages might go. NOTE: We’re not trying to trick anyone with these stages….”two butterflies” is intended to represent when a butterfly finds a mate. If it helps you can have children draw a little heart on that square for a reminder…..lest they think that this is the stage when the butterfly splits into two different parts: Original Butterfly, and Apocalyptic Zombie Clone Butterfly. Science just doesn’t support that at all.

Once your student has assembled the worksheet correctly, and traced over the butterfly vocabulary words, encourage them to present their fine work by mounting it to a piece of colored construction paper. I especially like a black backing to contrast the orange in the butterflies wings,

The black and white version of this activity is basically the same setup. I generally like to print in black and white myself, which is why most of the resources I make here are in black and white too. However, sometimes students can become frustrated with the small graphics such as these and give up coloring them all together. Which is why I wanted to offer both a color and a black and white version.

Butterfly Coloring Pages: If you have a student that loves butterflies, try printing our Easy Butterfly Coloring Pages. These were developed especially for preschool students and include a thick black line around the edges as well as extra letter formation practice. There are enough pages to make a small booklet for students to take home.