One of my Nanny kids, Noah, absolutely loves science. We are always doing some kind of science activity or experiment. The other day we were learning about the life cycle of insects. This is a topic Noah loves and every the years we’ve done many insect life cycle activities.
Insect Life Cycle
Everything you’ll need for the Life Cycle of Insects
This activity is really easy even if you don’t know the first thing about the insect life cycle. Here’s everything we used:
- Playdough (the more colors the better)
- The Very Hungry Caterpillar book
- The Grouchy Ladybug Book
- Caterpillar Life Cycle Hand Puppet
- Ladybug Life Cycle Hand puppet
Make the Life Cycle of insects out of Playdough
Once you have everything you need for the activity bust out the playdough first. Make little models of the life cycles of a ladybug and a butterfly.
While I love science and so does my little buddy, projects like this are easy for us to do together. But I know that not everyone is comfortable with science. If you have no idea what the different stages of a caterpillar or a ladybug are you can check out these photos to help when you make the models:
You can even get a butterfly life cycle model or a ladybug life cycle model.
Stages of the Life Cycle of a Ladybug:
- Egg
- Larva
- Pupa
- Adult
To learn more about the life cycle of the ladybug check out this awesome YouTube video.
Stages of the Life Cycle of a Butterfly:
- Egg
- Caterpillar
- Cocoon
- Butterfly
And for the life cycle of a butterfly, this video is a pretty cool watch.
Pin this Insect Life Cycle Post for Later
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Read The Very Hungry Caterpillar and The Grouchy Ladybug
These books are two of my favorites from when I was a kid. While they’re gear towards younger kids they’re so much fun to read.
We read these out loud after we created the play dough insect life cycles of the ladybug and the caterpillar.
For kids that are a little bit older I recommend:
To have even more insect fun check out my Amazon picks below. These books and activities will expand on this activity for kids of all ages. We’ve had a blast with the butterfly garden in particular. Noah has asked multiple times to have caterpillars and we ALWAYS do it! It is so much fun to take them outside and watch them fly away. We love butterflies so much that we even planted milkweed outside so they come and visit us!
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Insect Life Cycle: Act out the books while you read with puppets
Noah loves acting out stories. No matter the book, we’re always actively telling stories. He recently got these great puppets that show the life cycle of a butterfly and a ladybug.
With little zippers on the puppets they transform! The butterfly goes from a caterpillar to a cocoon to a butterfly. They’re both puppets to its easy to act out the stories too which we love! They make great gifts for any kids who has a big imagination or that loves insects.
We had a blast doing this insects life cycle project! SO much fun in fact that we’ve come back to it again and again. I hope you and the children in your life have as much fun making the life cycles and paying with the puppets as we did!
What did you think of this Insect Life Cycle activity? Let me know in the comments.
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