The Southwest Blend Magazine Butterfly Fun for Kids!
How a Butterfly Grows Up.

 How a Butterfly Grows Up
Click here for a Butterfly Color-In Page
To play the Monarch Butterfly Game click here.

Some baby animals look like just like their moms and dads, but smaller--but Butterflies are different. They go through four stages and only look like a Butterfly at the very end. Butterflies are insects. They have 6 legs. They have antennae. Butterflies fly during the day.

1. An adult butterfly lays an egg on the kind of plant leaf they like to eat. The eggs can hatch in 5-10 days in warm weather, but in cold weather in can take up to 6 months.


 

2. The egg hatches into a caterpillar or larva. This is a Monarch Butterfly caterpillar. Use this to look at the colors when you color in your caterpillar. Caterpillars will eat and grow for 2-4 weeks until they are all grown up.

3. The caterpillar forms a chrysalis or pupa--kind of a leathery sack that you can find hidden under leaves or trees and bushes in the summer. Inside the chrysalis, the caterpillar changes into a butterfly in 1-2 weeks if the weather is warm. If the weather is cold, the butterfly will stay inside until the weather is nice.
 

4. The butterfly comes out of the chrysalis or pupa
when it is ready. Butterflies don't eat leaves, they drink the sweet fluid found in flowers, called nectar. They do this with a long tube like a straw, called a proboscis.
This is a Monarch Butterfly that is found
throughout the Southwest USA and Mexico. Use this to look at the colors when you color in your butterfly.