What Comes Next? Butterfly, Frog and Ladybug

Six rows fill this 1st grade page. Each begins with one life-cycle stage in a shaded frame, then an orange arrow, then three stages to choose from. The child looks at the first picture and circles the one that comes right after it. On the sheet shown the rows start from frogspawn, a chrysalis, a tadpole with legs, a grown ladybug, a butterfly and a clump of ladybug eggs, so all three animals appear twice and the choices in each row come from the same animal as the first picture.

Asking only for the next stage keeps the page short and makes the cycle idea sharp. Two rows start from a grown-up animal, the ladybug and the butterfly, and the right answer for each is its eggs, which is where the cycle begins again. Those two rows are the ones to watch: a child who circles nothing, or picks a baby animal, has not yet understood that adults lay eggs. Because every choice in a row comes from the same animal, the decision is always about order, never about which animal it is.

One sheet, six rows, six circles. Because all the pictures are stages of three animals, this page works as a review after the base butterfly page and the frog cut and paste. It is also the first time the ladybug appears at first grade, so a short look at its four stages first will help. The metamorphosis face at grade 2 uses the same ladybug pictures and asks the question the other way round.