Easy Butterfly Art

We are getting ready to work on our next Life Cycle activity and I thought this time it would be extra fun to make some art to go along with it! In one of the butterfly books we have been reading this week we learned that butterfly wings are covered in tiny scales! And that fact is what inspired this creative butterfly activity. 

I began by cutting out the wings. I used three sheets of thick, white heavy weight construction paper folded in half and then cut out the shape of butterfly wings. I did not use a template, I just freely cut and it came out the way I wanted it to. 

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All three sets of butterfly wings were symmetrical. Symmetry is actually the first scientific subject that Bean became interested in and since then her interest in science has led to many discoveries!  

Now for the fun part! We took ten different colours of construction paper and ripped them up! I helped with this part and we had plenty of leftovers, which were later used in a colourful paper ripping sensory bin. Ripping paper is a great fine motor activity, but I make sure my kids know only to rip the paper they are given. 

Then they were given their glue sticks. Now, we do have liquid glue, and occasionally they will use it, but they much prefer glue sticks. And the scary thing is that they can literally go through a whole glue stick on one craft project! Needless to say, I stocked up during the back-to-school sales. Glue sticks are great for developing fine motor skills.

I showed them what to do on the extra butterfly by dabbing a bit of glue on a piece of ripped paper and then stuck it to the butterfly. They really liked this art project because gluing is one of their favourite things to do! While they were adding the "scales" to their butterflies, I read to them more butterfly books, went over the colours they were adding, talked about the life cycle of a butterfly and learned about the anatomy of a butterfly. I asked them if they wanted to add legs and antennae to their butterflies but they said no, so we will do a separate project on that.

See how a whole glue stick can be used up in an hour? :)

The kids each made one (Munckin's top left, Bean's bottom left) and then helped each other to make the extra one (right).

This was such a fun art project to create and I can't wait to display them on the wall! 

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