Life Cycle Activities for Kids: Plants and Animals

Finally, it is spring! Time to whip out the flip-flops and find every excuse to bring your class outside! We started our new unit in science with life cycles. In this post, I have listed a lot of ideas about life cycle activities for kids.

Life Cycle Activities for Kids: Start With Observations

My coworkers and I purchased ladybugs, praying mantis and painted ladies. Before I even told the students what we were going to learn about, we just observed them in these little bug nets. Every day the students watched God’s beautiful work take place by observing life change before their eyes.

The students drew a simple sketch every day of the insects. We made simple observations and discussed as a class what they noticed about each insect. 

Life Cycle Activities for Kids – Valuable Resources:

As the students observed the insects throughout the week, I used a lot of different resources to help teach about different life-cycles. Here is a list of a few of the resources I used.

Websites

1. Brainpop Jr. video on plant life cycles is a great one when going over parts of a plant!
2. Brainpop Jr. video on butterflies. A cute video that goes over metamorphosis and the stages of a complete life cycle.
3. This time-lapse video of a seed growing!
4. This is a short cartoon video that explains the steps in a caterpillars life cycle

Books About Life Cycles

I love using these National Geographic books that I got from Scholastic. Our class used points to purchase this animal pack for our library, it included the life cycle of frogs, ants, butterflies, and plants. Once the students learn the difference between incomplete and complete life cycles, I throw in other nontraditional animals for them to draw in their journals.  It is a great way for students to see that all living things follow a set life cycle.

Here are the books on Amazon if you don’t use Scholastic.

• Turtles
• Frogs
• Butterflies
• Seed to Plants

Sorting Bins

One of my favorite finds were these really neat toy life cycle pieces! These were from a partner teacher who purchased these at Lakeshore. You can find them on Amazon too. These made an awesome activity one day when I had to take off unexpectedly to take my daughter to the doctor! I made 5 groups in my room and had the students rotate to each life cycle station. Each group had 2-3 minutes to explore each life cycle, I had them pick their favorite one and draw their life cycle in their journal.

Life Cycle Anchor Chart Ideas

While the class studied each insect, I made anchor charts to go along with their growth! I made one for butterflies, praying mantis and plants.

After each anchor chart, I had the students copy the chart down in their journals. Theirs came out so cute!

Let Me Go

In the last week of our unit, we said farewell to our friendly visitors and let them all go!

The painted ladies did great! We only had one not make it out of its chrysalis!

For more life cycle activities for kids check out my fun science interactive notebook bundle.