Paper Plate Butterflies

Today was all about butterflies! I ordered caterpillars from Insect Lore and they are now in their chrysalids. (You can read about the last time I used this kit in my classroom here.) We are eagerly waiting for them to emerge as butterflies. Unfortunately, I think this will happen over the holiday weekend. Boo. In the meantime, we made our own butterflies with mini paper plates.

One table was set up to make the wings. The kids painted the paper plates with watercolors.

The other table was for the body of the butterfly. I took colored card stock and cut it into fourths. Then I rolled them up and taped them closed. (My stapler didn't fit in the hole.) I also used the scissors to make two small holes on one end for the antennae.

I put out a bunch of these with sparkly pipe cleaners and markers.

The kids put a pipe cleaner through the holes of the rolled paper.

Then they used the markers to make eyes. (And some kids even made decorations on the body.)

When the plates were dry, I cut them in half and shaped them a little to make them look like wings.

I stapled the wings together and used masking tape to attach them to the body. I tried using glue dots, but the plates weren't sticking very well. The tape worked fine as long as the kids didn't pull on the wings. And if they did and the wings came off, it was easy to reattach them. In fact, I mentioned that without the wings, it looked like a caterpillar. So then the kids started playing with them first as caterpillars and then added the wings to turn them into butterflies! I think they look so colorful sitting on the table in a big group.

And here are the kids making their butterflies fly!

You could use them as finger puppets, too!

 

Fun Fact: Butterflies taste with their feet!