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You are here: Home / Spring Activities / How to Make a Beautiful Butterfly Craft with Preschoolers

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How to Make a Beautiful Butterfly Craft with Preschoolers

April 21, 2013 by Sheryl Cooper

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Inside: This butterfly craft results in a beautiful spring decoration for your home or classroom. We used industrial-sized coffee filters along with vibrant watercolors. Threading beads on the antennae add some fine motor fun!

Every spring we love putting together a fun butterfly craft for preschoolers. We order our caterpillars and they arrive after spring break. This is a highlight every year!

We read books about how caterpillars turn into butterflies, we explore the butterfly life cycle on our science shelf, and we make butterfly art!

For this particular art activity, we wanted to add lots of fine motor opportunities. We included painting, squeezing, twisting, and threading! It took several days, but our preschoolers loved every step.

How to Make a Beautiful Butterfly Craft with Preschoolers

How to Make a Beautiful Butterfly Craft with Preschoolers

When our caterpillars arrive after spring break, we begin our butterfly art. I love this time of year, when the temperatures are warming and our backyard friends are starting to visit.
Before beginning this butterfly craft, we read some butterfly books.


What you will need:

 

  • Wooden dowels
  • Commercial-sized coffee filters
  • Pipe Cleaners (Chenille Stems)
  • Liquid Watercolors
  • Pony Beads
  • Tempera paint for the dowels

Preschool Butterfly Theme
 
After observing our caterpillars and learning how they will turn into butterflies, we first make caterpillars. Then, it’s time to make our big butterflies!

First, paint the dowels.

 

Paint the wooden dowels with tempera paint and let them dry.

 

Preschool Butterfly Theme

Then, paint the coffee filters.

 

Dilute your liquid watercolors with water and brush them onto the coffee filters.

 

Preschool Butterfly Theme
Preschool Butterfly Theme
 

Assemble the butterflies.

 

Once the coffee filters are dry, scrunch the centers and loop a pipe cleaner around it and attach to the painted dowel. Twist another pipe cleaner around the top of the dowel.

 

Provide a container of pony beads and invite the children to thread them onto the pipe cleaners at the top of the dowels. These will be the antennae.

 

 
Preschool Butterfly Theme
Then twist the remaining pipe cleaners.
Preschool Butterfly Theme
 
Now we have our big, beautiful butterflies!
Preschool Butterfly Theme
Preschool Butterfly Theme

How to Make a Beautiful Butterfly Craft with Preschoolers

Add this craft to your butterfly life cycle theme, too:

preschool caterpillar craft

Bugs and Butterfly Lesson Plans

I’m so excited to be one of the authors of these hands-on lesson plans for toddlers and for preschoolers!

Easy to follow lesson plans include activity modifications and adaptations to meet the needs of all learners.

Note: This is a digital product. Links to downloads will be sent to you after purchase!

For more information, click on the graphics below:

Toddler Lesson Plans Bugs and Butterflies

preschool lesson plans bugs and butterflies

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Filed Under: preschool, Spring Activities, Themes Tagged With: art, fine motor, preschool, spring

About Sheryl Cooper

Sheryl Cooper is the founder of Teaching 2 and 3 Year Olds, a website full of activities for toddlers and preschoolers. She has been teaching this age group for over 20 years and loves to share her passion with teachers, parents, grandparents, and anyone with young children in their lives.

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Comments

  1. Building Contractors Grounds Maintenance Contractors

    April 24, 2013 at 1:21 pm

    Thanks for the ideas i’ve been assigned to build a school playground and think i shall input an outdoor painting area.

    • Sheryl Cooper

      April 24, 2013 at 3:17 pm

      We love our outdoor painting area! We recently purchased a plexi-glass double-sided easel for outdoors and the preschoolers LOVE it.

  2. Raleigh Preschool

    April 26, 2013 at 1:41 pm

    This is a great spring activity! Love that coffee filters are the wings of the butterfly.

  3. Ashley

    April 7, 2014 at 9:08 pm

    We loved raising butterflies last year, and I love the pretty butterflies you made to go with it!

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