Kids corner
Monarchs for kids
A monarch starts as an egg smaller than a grain of rice. Then it becomes a caterpillar, a chrysalis, and a butterfly that can fly all the way to Mexico. Click, play, count and colour your way through its story.
Danaus plexippus just out of the chrysalis
The life cycle
Four stages, one butterfly
Tap a stepping stone to see each stage. Every monarch you have ever seen went through all four.
About 4 days
Egg
A mother monarch lays one tiny egg at a time, under a milkweed leaf. The egg is about the size of a pinhead (1.2 mm tall). It hatches in about four days.
9 to 14 days
Caterpillar
The caterpillar eats milkweed and nothing else. It grows so fast that it gets almost 2,000 times heavier, and it sheds its skin five times as it grows.
8 to 15 days
Chrysalis
The caterpillar hangs upside down and turns into a green chrysalis with gold dots. Inside, its whole body changes into a butterfly.
2 to 5 weeks (summer)
Butterfly
Summer butterflies live two to five weeks. The last butterflies of the summer are different: they fly to Mexico and can live up to nine months.
Facts: Monarch Joint Venture.
See it for real
Real monarchs, real photos
How far would you fly?
Pick your town
Monarchs from your town fly south every fall. Pick a place and watch the trip: how far it is, and how many days of flying it takes.
Straight-line distance; real trips are longer. Monarchs fly about 40 to 48 km a day on migration (Monarch Joint Venture). Eastern monarchs winter in Mexico; most monarchs from British Columbia join the western monarchs on the California coast.
Word search
Find ten monarch words
Look across, down and on a slant. Find all ten and watch what happens.
Find the words. Tap the first letter, then the last letter. Words go across, down, or on a slant.
Matching game
What goes with what?
Match each word to its sentence. Can you get all five?
Pick a word, then pick the sentence that goes with it.
Colouring pages
Print, colour, share
Ask a grown-up to print these. Each sheet is one page, sized for letter paper. Real monarchs are orange with black veins and white dots, but your monarch can be any colour you like.
- Monarch butterflyPrint it (PDF, Monarch butterfly)
- CaterpillarPrint it (PDF, Caterpillar)
- ChrysalisPrint it (PDF, Chrysalis)
- Egg on a milkweed leafPrint it (PDF, Egg on a milkweed leaf)
