Butterfly Word Search Printable Worksheets

New puzzle hides 16 butterfly and bug words; solve the grid on screen or print it with its answer key.

Name Date

Butterfly and Bug Word Search

Find every word hidden in the grid. Words go across and down.

0 of 16 words found

CDAGGNHWIHDIAEN

AECRICKETSWNAYR

TCOATARLRPLSCRE

EHRSHHBAPIYWOON

RRRSMUPDBDFACBE

PYTHONEYBEELOUI

ISDORNUBRRGLOTL

LAKPLBSUCIPONTO

LLCPADAGBVWWHEN

AIBERSZANKITVRR

RSCRVANTENNAHFG

AUAGARDENOGIWLO

IEYELHYYRTSLLYG

NJTBUMBLEBEEAHR

WYTMPSLUNAMOTHT

This grid is wider and taller than its box. Slide it to see every letter.To drag, hold the first letter for a moment, then slide.Keyboard: Tab to the grid, arrow keys to move, Enter on the first and last letter.

ButterflyBUTTERFLY
SwallowtailSWALLOWTAIL
Luna MothLUNA MOTH
CaterpillarCATERPILLAR
ChrysalisCHRYSALIS
CocoonCOCOON
HoneybeeHONEYBEE
BumblebeeBUMBLEBEE
GrasshopperGRASSHOPPER
LadybugLADYBUG
CricketCRICKET
SpiderSPIDER
AntennaANTENNA
WingsWINGS
LarvaLARVA
GardenGARDEN

16 of 24 words from the Butterfly and Bug Favorites list.

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Word list

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Answer key: Butterfly and Bug Word Search

CDAGGNHWIHDIAEN

AECRICKETSWNAYR

TCOATARLRPLSCRE

EHRSHHBAPIYWOON

RRRSMUPDBDFACBE

PYTHONEYBEELOUI

ISDORNUBRRGLOTL

LAKPLBSUCIPONTO

LLCPADAGBVWWHEN

AIBERSZANKITVRR

RSCRVANTENNAHFG

AUAGARDENOGIWLO

IEYELHYYRTSLLYG

NJTBUMBLEBEEAHR

WYTMPSLUNAMOTHT

BUTTERFLY, SWALLOWTAIL, LUNA MOTH, CATERPILLAR, CHRYSALIS, COCOON, HONEYBEE, BUMBLEBEE, GRASSHOPPER, LADYBUG, CRICKET, SPIDER, ANTENNA, WINGS, LARVA, GARDEN

Next step Make a puzzle from the bugs your class found Scramble the same bug words

All 98 words

Butterflies and Moths 18

Admiral The red kind has black wings with red bands and white spots.
Buckeye Its wings carry bold round eyespots, a large one and a small one.
Butterfly A winged insect with large, often bright wings that fold together at rest and a fluttering flight.
Caterpillar The larval stage of butterflies and moths.
Chrysalis The name for the pupa of a butterfly.
Cocoon A protective case in which a pupa may be enclosed.
Fritillary The great spangled kind of North America is orange above with black dashes.
Hairstreak A member of the gossamer-winged family.
Hawk Moth Also called a sphinx; many of its caterpillars are known as hornworms.
Luna Moth A night flier with a white body and wings of lime green.
Milkweed The plant, named for its milky latex, that monarch larvae feed on.
Monarch Each fall the eastern ones fly thousands of miles south to Florida and Mexico.
Painted Lady The most widespread of all its kind in the world.
Proboscis A long tube-shaped mouthpart used for sucking up food.
Silkworm The larva that wraps itself in a cocoon of raw thread used to make fine cloth.
Skipper It is named for its quick, darting flight.
Swallowtail One of a family of more than 550 large, colorful kinds, found on every continent but Antarctica.
Viceroy A North American kind long thought to be a copycat of the monarch.

Show all 98 words (80 more)

Insects 22

Aphid A small insect that sucks sap from plants.
Beetle An insect of the order Coleoptera, which has about 400,000 described kinds.
Bumblebee It has a round body covered in soft hair that makes it look fuzzy.
Carpenter Ant The true ones chew out galleries in dead, damp wood for their nests.
Cricket An insect best known for the loud, steady chirping of the males at night.
Damselfly Like a dragonfly but usually smaller and slimmer.
Dragonfly A flying insect with about 3,000 known kinds, most of them tropical; many shine with metallic colors.
Earwig An insect with a pair of pincers like forceps at the end of its body.
Firefly A member of a beetle family of more than 2,400 kinds, many of which signal with light.
Gnat A tiny flying insect; a big group in the air is called a cloud.
Grasshopper A ground-dwelling insect that grips food with short front legs and springs off with powerful hind ones.
Honeybee A social flying insect that builds nests of six-sided wax cells.
Hornet One of the largest of the social wasps.
Katydid A relative of the cricket once known as a long-horned grasshopper.
Lacewing The green kind feeds on pollen and nectar, with mites and aphids on the side.
Ladybug A small beetle that is called a ladybird in the United Kingdom.
Locust A short-horned grasshopper that sometimes gathers in huge swarms.
Mantis Its big front legs fold as if in prayer and snap out to grip prey.
Mayfly A water insect whose adults come out in enormous numbers from spring to fall.
Stick Insect Its likeness to a twig makes it hard for predators to spot.
Stinkbug An insect that is called a shield bug in British English.
Weevil A small beetle known for its very long snout.

Spiders and Small Creatures 16

Arachnid A member of the class that holds scorpions, ticks, mites and harvestmen.
Centipede A many-legged predator whose name means "hundred feet".
Daddy Longlegs A nickname for the harvestman, an arachnid with more than 6,650 known kinds.
Earthworm A soil-dwelling animal with no backbone.
Huntsman It chases down its prey and does not build a web to catch it.
Millipede It has two pairs of legs on most of its body segments, and its name means "thousand feet".
Mite A very small eight-legged arachnid.
Orb Weaver A builder of the spiral, wheel-shaped webs found in gardens and fields.
Pill Bug A land crustacean that can roll itself into a ball.
Scorpion An arachnid with grasping pincers and a narrow tail that ends in a stinger.
Slug A land gastropod with no shell to be seen.
Snail A gastropod with a shell.
Spider An air-breathing animal with eight legs, fangs and organs that spin silk.
Spinneret The organ that silk comes out of.
Tarantula A large and often hairy arachnid; more than a thousand kinds are known.
Web A silk structure built to catch prey.

Parts of an Insect 13

Abdomen The third and last region of an insect's body.
Antenna One of a pair of sensing parts on the head; an arachnid has none.
Compound Eye An organ of sight that may be made of thousands of tiny separate units.
Elytra The hardened front wings of a beetle.
Exoskeleton A hard frame on the outside of the body that supports and protects it.
Feelers An everyday word for antennae.
Head The first of the three regions of an insect's body.
Mandible One of an insect's two jaws, which work from side to side to hold and bite food.
Segment One of the repeated sections that a body is divided into.
Six Legs Every insect has three pairs of jointed limbs, which makes this many.
Stinger A sharp organ that can inject venom.
Thorax The midsection of the body, which carries the legs and the wings.
Wings Outgrowths of the outer skeleton that let an insect fly; many kinds have two pairs.

Life Cycle and Colonies 15

Adult The last stage an insect reaches, also called the imago.
Colony A whole population of ants or bees living together.
Drone A male honey bee; it has no stinger.
Egg The first stage of life, laid by the female.
Emerge To come out, as a moth does from its case.
Grub The thick, soft young of a beetle.
Hatch To come out of an egg.
Larva It hatches from the egg and looks very different from its parents; a caterpillar is one.
Metamorphosis A marked, fairly sudden change in body form as an animal develops.
Molt To cast off the old outer covering so that a larger one can form.
Nymph The young form of an insect that changes little by little, such as a grasshopper.
Pupa The third of the four stages in the life of a beetle or a butterfly.
Queen The mother of most or all of the bees in a hive.
Swarm A crowd of locusts, bees or gnats on the move.
Worker A female bee, not the queen, that carries out most of the tasks of the hive.

Where Bugs Live 14

Anthill A pile of earth at the entrance of a nest.
Burrow A hole or tunnel dug into the ground for shelter.
Flower Bed A patch of soil planted with blooms.
Garden Ground that people plant and tend, where bees and butterflies come to the blooms.
Hedgerow A row of shrubs, sometimes with trees, that marks a boundary.
Hive An enclosed structure where honey bees raise their young.
Honeycomb A mass of six-sided cells built from beeswax.
Mound A home that termites build from soil, saliva and dung.
Rotten Log A fallen trunk that is soft with decay.
Tall Grass Uncut blades of a meadow or lawn.
Tree Stump What is left in the ground after a trunk is cut down.
Tunnel An underground passage.
Underground Below the surface of the soil.
Wasp Nest A home that hornets and their relatives build out of paper.

How this list was compiled: 98 words in six lists: butterflies and moths, insects, spiders and other small creatures in a list of their own, parts of an insect, the life cycle and where bugs live. Facts in the clues were checked on October 3, 2026 against each animal's English Wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/, CC BY-SA 4.0); spellings against English Wiktionary. Licence: own work

How it works

These butterfly word search printable worksheets open on 16 of 24 butterfly and bug favorites. 98 words fill 6 lists: butterflies and moths, insects, spiders and small creatures, parts of an insect, the life cycle and where bugs live.

Read the full guide

A butterfly list and a life cycle list

Butterflies and Moths holds 18 words: Monarch, Swallowtail, Painted Lady and Luna Moth, with Caterpillar, Chrysalis, Cocoon and Milkweed. Life Cycle and Colonies has 15, from Egg, Larva and Pupa to Queen, Worker and Drone.

Spider word search printable: Spiders and Small Creatures

This list keeps the animals that are not insects together: Spider, Tarantula, Scorpion, Centipede, Millipede, Snail, Slug, Earthworm and more, 16 words in all. The 21 words of Easy Bug have 3 to 5 letters each; Hard Bug holds 43, up to Daddy Longlegs and Metamorphosis.

In More options, tick Show clues, not words: "It is named for its quick, darting flight" leads to Skipper.
Six Legs hides as SIXLEGS; pupils can count a spider's legs to see why Spider sits in another list.

Questions and answers

Is there an insect word search printable too?

Yes. Choose Insects under Start from a list: 22 words, from Honeybee, Ladybug and Firefly to Katydid and Lacewing. Parts of an Insect adds 13 more, such as Antenna, Thorax and Abdomen.

Is a spider an insect?

No. A spider is an arachnid with eight legs. An insect has six legs and a body in three parts: the head, the thorax and the abdomen. That is why spiders, scorpions and mites have a list of their own here.

Which butterflies are in the word search?

Nine kinds: Monarch, Swallowtail, Painted Lady, Admiral, Skipper, Fritillary, Buckeye, Viceroy and Hairstreak. The moths are Luna Moth, Hawk Moth and Silkworm.

Why are Ant, Bee and Moth not hidden by themselves?

ANT sits inside ANTENNA and CARPENTERANT, BEE inside HONEYBEE and BUMBLEBEE, and MOTH inside LUNAMOTH and HAWKMOTH. Hidden alone, each could be circled in a place the answer key does not mark. All three are in the Insects list of the word search maker.

All 98 words

Butterflies and Moths 18

Insects 22

Spiders and Small Creatures 16

Parts of an Insect 13

Life Cycle and Colonies 15

Where Bugs Live 14

How it works

A butterfly list and a life cycle list

Spider word search printable: Spiders and Small Creatures

Questions and answers

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