My name is Minji, and I love to watch living things grow. One morning in science class, our teacher gave each group a small cabbage plant in a pot. When I looked closely at one leaf, I found a tiny yellow egg. It was smaller than a grain of rice.
A few days later, the egg began to hatch, and a tiny larva crawled out. Most people call this larva a caterpillar. Its first meal was its own eggshell. After that, it chewed cabbage leaves almost all day long, so it grew very fast.
But its skin cannot stretch as it grows, so it must shed its old skin many times. Our caterpillar did this four times in about two weeks. Then one day it stopped eating and tied itself to a stem with a thin silk thread. Its skin slowly turned into a hard case, and it became a pupa.
Although the pupa did not move at all, big changes were taking place inside it. About a week later, the case split open, and a white butterfly slowly climbed out. It waited for its wet wings to dry, and then it flew toward a flower. At last, it had become an adult.
Our teacher explained that this huge change in body shape is called metamorphosis. A butterfly grows through four stages: egg, larva, pupa, and adult. When the adult lays its own eggs, the life cycle starts all over again.