Life Cycle Activities for Kids (Plants & Animals Made Easy)

Teaching life cycles in the classroom can be so much fun—but it also takes a lot of planning. If you’re looking for simple, engaging life cycle activities for kids, these ideas will help you save time and keep students excited about science.

These life cycle activities are easy to prep, engaging for students, and perfect for your science units.

Need ready-to-use life cycle activities, especially for plant life cycles? Grab my Science Interactive Notebook Bundle to make planning this unit easier.

Life Cycle Activities for Kids: Start with Simple 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: Videos, Books, and Resources

To help support these observations and deepen understanding, I also used a variety of videos, books, and other resources during our unit. Here are a few of my favorites:

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, which 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

Make Life Cycle Lessons Easy

Want ready-to-use life cycle activities—especially for plant life cycles—plus more science notebook pages? Check out my Science Interactive Notebook Bundle to save planning time.

Includes plant life cycle activities plus multiple science units—so you can reuse it all year.

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!

Plant Life Cycle Activity Example

Here’s an example of a plant life cycle activity from my interactive notebook resource. This is a simple, hands-on way for students to practice sequencing and truly understand how plants grow and change over time.

Students love having something fun they can refer back to, and it makes reviewing life cycles so much easier throughout the unit.

Sorting Bins

One of my favorite finds was these really neat toy life cycle pieces!

These were from a partner teacher who purchased them at Lakeshore. You can find them on Amazon, too. These made for an awesome activity one day when I had to take my daughter to the doctor unexpectedly! I set up 5 groups in my room and had the students rotate through 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.

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.