Life Cycles of Animals — Answer Key
Part A: Fill in the Blank
Write the missing word or number on each line.
1. A frog lays its eggs in water.
A life 'cycle' is the pattern of stages from baby to adult, and it keeps going round and round.
2. A tadpole breathes with gills.
Frog eggs are soft and wet, so the mother frog places them in the 'water' of a pond to keep them safe.
3. An adult frog breathes with lungs.
A caterpillar is the 'larva' stage, and after eating enough it turns into a pupa to change inside a chrysalis.
4. A caterpillar eats lots of leaves.
A young chick has soft fluff, but as it gets 'older' it trades the fluff for real feathers to help it stay warm.
5. A butterfly comes out of the chrysalis.
Adult butterflies have bright 'wings' that let them fly and help them hide from hungry animals.
6. A chick uses its beak to break the shell.
Tadpoles swim in water all day, so they use 'gills' to pull in the air they need from the water.
7. The chick grows feathers and becomes a hen.
A grown frog has strong back legs, so it can 'hop' far across the ground to catch bugs or escape danger.
8. Every animal has a life cycle.
A hen is an 'adult' chicken — a female grown-up that lays eggs of her own.
9. The adult stage is when animals can reproduce.
Caterpillars 'eat' a huge amount of leaves so they have enough stored energy to turn into butterflies.
Part B: Matching
Match each item on the left to the correct answer on the right.
1. Match each item to its correct answer.
butterfly
→ chrysalis
chrysalis
frog
→ tadpole
tadpole
chicken
→ nest
nest
caterpillar
→ leaf
leaf
A cocoon protects the pupa stage, a tadpole is a baby frog, every life starts with an egg, and the larva of a butterfly is a caterpillar.