Drawing Life Cycle Diagrams

You can draw a butterfly's whole life as a circle of pictures. Start with the egg. Draw a tiny bean shape sitting on a leaf. Mother butterflies lay eggs on special leaves. Next, draw the caterpillar. It hatches from the egg and eats lots of leaves to grow. Then draw the pupa, also called a chrysalis. The caterpillar hides inside it while its body changes. Last, draw the adult butterfly with big wings. It comes out of the chrysalis and can fly away. Soon it will lay eggs, and the cycle starts again. Draw arrows between your pictures to show how one stage changes into the next.

Fast Plants are special little plants that grow very quickly. They help kids watch a whole plant life cycle in just a few weeks. First a seed is planted in soil. The seed sprouts and becomes a seedling with small leaves. The seedling grows into a mature plant with buds. The buds open into yellow flowers. After the flowers are pollinated, they make seed pods full of new seeds. When the seeds are ready, the cycle can start all over again. Watching each stage helps you draw and label a real plant life cycle diagram.

If you plant one seed, how many new seeds can it make? Kids plant a Fast Plant seed and care for it as it grows. They watch it sprout into a seedling, grow taller, and open flowers. After the flowers are pollinated, seed pods grow. At the end, kids count the seeds inside the pods. One little seed can make many, many new seeds! This shows why the plant life cycle keeps going and going. Each new seed can grow into a whole new plant.

A butterfly and a plant can live their life cycles side by side. Kids raise Brassica butterflies and Fast Plants together and watch both change. The butterfly goes from egg, to caterpillar, to pupa, to adult butterfly. At the same time, the plant goes from seed, to seedling, to flowering plant, to new seeds. The two cycles help each other. Caterpillars eat the plant's leaves, and adult butterflies visit the flowers and carry pollen. Pollination helps the flowers make seeds. Drawing both cycles next to each other is a great way to compare how different living things grow.

Angiosperm is a big word for a flowering plant. Flowering plants are the most common plants on land. Their life cycle goes around in a circle. It starts with a seed, often tucked inside a fruit. The seed sprouts and grows into a young seedling. The seedling grows into a mature plant with stems and leaves. Then the plant makes flowers. Flowers are the plant's way of making seeds. Pollen moves from flower to flower, often carried by bees and other insects. After pollination, the flower can grow into a fruit with seeds inside. Those seeds fall out, and the cycle begins again.