Nature Craft for Toddlers/Preschooler: Butterfly
Kristina
—Aug 30, 2022
Toddlers and preschoolers love crafts. One perfect summer nature craft for toddler or preschooler which is easy and fun is to create a colorful butterfly. Perhaps, first make a nature caterpillar and the next day design a butterfly. The butterfly is simple to make and use fresh flowers, perhaps from a wildflower garden or your front/back garden.
The best thing about this craft is that all the parts are made from nature, therefore it is environmentally friendly. Your toddler/preschooler will love searching for the ingredients of the butterfly and have even more fun playing with flower confetti!
Yes, you heard me right, you get to make flower confetti!
A great way to get your toddler/preschooler primed for the activity is to read “The Hungry Caterpillar”. Once you read the book you can talk about how you get to create not only a caterpillar from nature but also the beautiful butterfly it will turn into.
Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links. This means that, at zero cost to you, I will earn an affiliate commission if you click through the link and finalize a purchase. Rest assured all products I suggest are products I have bought or would buy based on personal experience or through my network of other mommas.
Items You Will Need To Make A Nature Butterfly With A Toddler, Preschooler or Kindergartener
- Small sticks
- Glue- glue stick, liquid glue or hot glue gun
- Fresh flowers
- Holly Berries (Optional)
- Paper
How To Create A Nature Butterfly With A Toddler, Preschooler or Kindergartener
1. Collect sticks and flowers outside
One stick is needed for each butterfly, it will act as the body. The stick should be shorter than the length of a paper and not too thick. This is easy to find from twigs in the yard, out on a hike or from a tree.
Next you will need to locate flowers. Maybe you have a wildflower garden in your backyard, or know of one nearby on a local hike or open field. Just make sure your toddler isn’t picking your neighbors front garden flowers!
For a nice and colorful butterfly try to find flowers of all different colors. Perhaps spring produces the most flowers in your area and you can collect cherry blossoms and daffodils or summer with wild flowers and hydrangeas. Fall can be a great time too with sunflowers and mums.
You will have the option of what nature item to use for the butterfly’s eyes. In the butterflies I made with my two toddlers we used the pistil of the flower for one and holly berries for the other.
Holly berries are best in autumn, but your tree might still have some red berries at other times of the year.
2. Create the flower confetti
Gather all your flowers that you and your child have collected. Start pulling each petal off from the flower and placing it in a pile/bowl. This will be the colored confetti used for the body of the butterfly.
If some petals are large you can cut them or tear them in half.
Save the pistils if you wish to use them for the eyes.
3. Glue the body of the butterfly onto the paper.
Take your stick and glue it to the middle of your paper lengthwise. My toddler first used his glue stick to glue his stick, later I took it and reinforced it with a hot glue gun.
For safety, if you use a hot glue gun make sure your toddler doesn’t touch the glue gun and waits for the glue to dry before going onto the next step. Liquid glue would be better than a glue stick but not as secure as a hot glue gun.
4. Design the butterfly’s wings
Have your toddler/preschooler use their glue stick to create the outline of the butterfly wings. Fill in the outline, covering all the wing space with glue.
Next is the fun part. Take your flower confetti and drop it and press onto the glue to make the colorful butterfly wings. You might want to place the paper in a box before throwing down the confetti. This will ensure all the confetti stays in the box and is easier to shake around.
Hint: You might have to flip some of the flowers’ petals to the more colorful side if your flowers’ petals are more vivid on one side.
5. Glue on butterfly’s eyes
The last step is to glue on the eyes. The glue stick will not hold the eyes well and I would recommend your little one using liquid glue or the adult to use the hot glue gun.
Either glue the holly berries or flowers’ pistils onto the stick where the eyes should go.
Now you will have a colorful, creative nature butterfly!