The Monarch Butterfly life cycle

FREE pictures and the Monarch Butterfly life cycle_Reading unit

Some interesting and amazing Monarch Butterfly facts

Did you know the Monarch Butterfly is the only insect that migrates up to 2,500 miles to hibernate in warmer climate. Pretty impressive for an insect weighing only 0.25-0.75 grams!

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Last week both my kindergartner and my second grader worked on the butterfly life cycle. It is one of my favorite subjects! And who doesn’t love butterflies? The “metamorphosis” (= changing of form) amazes me. How is it possible for a caterpillar to go from the larvae stage, to becoming a chrysalis and then “VOILA!” -come out as a butterfly?

How can they know how to return to the same trees every single year they migrate, even though it’s a new butterfly every time? And how can the fourth generation live for as long as 8 months, while the first, second and third generation only live 2-6 weeks?

Yes, it’s a pretty amazing creature indeed!

Research

I always like to learn about a subject before we create the actual project, so we decided to pay “The Butterfly Farms” a visit. Unfortunately the day we chose was pretty gloomy. It was cloudy (which is kind of unusual here in San Diego) and a bit chilly and not many butterflies were to be seen. Last time we visited, however, we saw all kinds of different butterflies. One of the men working there guided us around and taught us many new things and showed us the butterfly life cycle. Before leaving we bought a milkweed plant, which is the Monarch caterpillars’ ONLY source of food. It already had lots of eggs on the underside of its leaves.

I was worried the rabbits and squirrels (we have A LOT of those in our yard) would eat the plant, but the guide told me not to worry. The milkweed plant is poisonous to vertebrates and most likely won’t be touched. Boy, am I glad we bought this plant! We were able to follow the whole life cycle from close up and I was even lucky enough being able to snap some amazing photos of the whole transformation.

The Monarch Butterfly Life Cycle -UP CLOSE

Well, sure enough -after a few days small caterpillars were hatching, sitting all over the plant. At first they were tiny. They ate and ate and ATE… there was almost nothing left of the plant by the time they transformed into green chrysalises. Funny thing was, they attached themselves a little bit all over the place. We found them hanging from a wood structure, underneath our planting boxes and even from the metal roof covering our firewood!

We kept on watching the chrysalises every day and they turned darker and darker and eventually became see-through! Here you can really see the butterfly taking form inside!

Emerging!

I was sitting outside long periods of time, because I really wanted to catch the moment the butterfly would emerge in slow-mo, but it seemed they emerged as soon as I turned my back. After 10-14 days they started coming out! The butterflies were all crumpled and a bit wet at first, but as soon as they dried, they found their way to the flowers to feed on nectar. Here you can clearly see the butterfly’s “straw” (called “proboscis”) curled up.

Sometimes the butterflies needed some help to find their way to the flowers:)

Finishing up our project

Back to our school project: Using these pictures we took a couple of years ago, the children made a poster of the Monarch Butterfly life cycle. They wrote facts under the pictures, each one according to their own level of writing. Here is the result:

Give aways

Sometimes it can be hard to find texts for small children to read and understand, so I decided to make a Monarch Butterfly_Reading unit, including 4 pages with one page of questions they can answer after reading. You can also download and use my pictures of the Monarch Butterfly life cycle, if you’d like. So now you and your children can learn more about the butterfly life cycle, migration and read some more cool facts! When I wrote these I used what we learned at the Butterfly Farms, but I also used information from the internet (of course). I found “Learn about nature -The Monarch Butterfly” and “Monarch Watch” to be very helpful.

I hope this post will help you explore butterflies together with your children. As always, let me know if you have any questions. Click the photos or reading unit to download your FREE copy. Enjoy! You may use these for school or personal purposes. Please have fun with it and post pictures of your life cycles.

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