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.
Frog eggs need to stay wet to survive, so a mother frog lays them in water like a pond or stream.
2. A tadpole breathes with gills.
Tadpoles live underwater and use gills, just like fish, to take in oxygen from the water.
3. An adult frog breathes with lungs.
Once a frog grows up and lives on land, it switches to lungs so it can breathe air.
4. A caterpillar eats lots of leaves.
Caterpillars need lots of energy to grow quickly, and they get it by chewing leaves all day.
5. A butterfly comes out of the chrysalis.
After the changes inside the chrysalis are done, a butterfly pushes its way out with new wings.
6. A chick uses its beak to break the shell.
When a chick is ready to hatch, it taps the shell with its small beak until it cracks open.
7. The chick grows feathers and becomes a hen.
As the chick keeps growing, its fluffy down is replaced by feathers, and it becomes a hen.
8. Every animal has a life cycle.
Birds, frogs, and butterflies all change in steps from birth to adult, and that pattern is called a life cycle.
9. The adult stage is when animals can reproduce.
Once an animal reaches the adult stage, it is grown up enough to reproduce and have babies of its own.
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 butterfly forms inside a chrysalis, a frog begins as a tadpole, a chicken hatches in a nest, and a caterpillar lives on a leaf.