Butterfly Sun Catcher

This was a really simple butterfly craft that was a lot of fun.

Here’s what you’ll need: contact paper, scissors, marker and tissue paper.

Have your child rip the tissue paper into little pieces.  It’s great for developing those fine motor muscles and toddlers love to rip things apart.

Cut your contact paper in half and then have your child put tissue paper on one half of the contact paper.

After your child finishes putting the tissue paper on, put the other piece of contact paper on the back of the 1st piece to keep all the tissue paper inside.  Then I folded it in half and drew a kind-of butterfly shape.

Cut it out and hang your sun catcher on a window.

Butterfly Finger Painting

Here is a really simple butterfly craft you can do with a toddler of any age.

Here’s what you’ll need- finger paint and paper with half of a butterfly drawn on one side of the paper.  Since you will be having your child paint only half of the paper and then folding the paper over to create a symmetrical print, make sure you fold the paper before hand to make it easier to fold over when it’s time for that step.

I folded the paper in half so that Hailey could only see the half of the paper I wanted her to paint because “only paint this side of the paper” would not have been a direction she would have followed.  Then I had her paint just the one side of the paper.  (My butterfly outline is actually on the other side of the paper so that I didn’t have to worry about being able to see it through the paint.)

Get to work finger painting.  And also, in case you can’t tell by Hailey’s face, it’s best to eat some of the paint too.  And apparently finger paint tastes better than Tempera paint because I literally had to pull Hailey’s fists out of her mouth with the finger paint.  Then when I was trying to clean her up afterwards she was trying to lick the paint off her hands before I could wash it.  Anyhoo…

Once your child is all done painting, open the paper up and then fold the paper over to create a print on the other half of the paper that is the same as the one your child just painted.  Then hang it up to dry.

(Hint- I also had another piece of paper ready to be painted because I knew Hailey was going to want to try it again after she saw the results.  And I was right.)

Here is Hailey’s finished butterfly.