1. Life Cycles:
Monarch Butterfly

2. Those black and orange wings that you see fluttering over a field belong to the monarch butterfly. Metamorphosis for the monarch involves going through four stages: egg, larva, pupa, and adult. An egg the size of a pencil point has been laid on a milkweed leaf.

3. The caterpillar, called a larva, emerges and is a non-stop food consumer. It begins by eating it’s own eggshell and moves on to every milkweed leaf it can find until its skin splits. Molting or changing skin occurs four or five times in just two weeks.

4. Then the caterpillar enters the chrysalis stage where it is immobile
Then the caterpillar enters the chrysalis stage where it is immobile. An adult monarch emerges and the life cycle repeats.

5. Words from the Passage Metamorphosis Milkweed Consumer Splits Weeks
Chrysalis
Repeats

6. This lesson was created by Morgan Blanton using the “Life Cycles: Monarch Butterfly” lesson in Guess the Covered Word for Fourth Grade
(Kohfeldt & Collier, 2000)