Nothing beats getting outside with the kids and looking at the natural world that’s on our doorstep. We love trying to spot caterpillars and butterflies now the weather’s warming up. They never cease to amaze us, their life cycle is just incredible! Today’s caterpillar and butterfly craft is perfect for following up a real life nature hunt with preschoolers.
Arts and crafts about animals and insects that we find outside are a great way to continue chatting about nature back in the home or classroom and a fun way to consolidate learning. If your kids like looking at spiders as well as butterflies outside they’ll enjoy our Cute Spider That Really Climbs and our Itsy Bitsy Play Set too.
This caterpillar and butterfly craft is adorably cute and because its made from recycled materials and yarn scraps it costs next to nothing to make. This simple craft also develops fine motor skills and gives children the opportunity to think about the colours and features of the real life caterpillars and butterflies they can see outside.
Supplies To Make A Caterpillar And Butterfly Craft
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- Strong Cardboard,
- Scissors
- Sticky Tape
- Yarn Scraps US / UK
- Googly Eyes US / UK
- Glue
- Felt Scraps
- Optional: Butterfly Kit US / UK
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How To Make A Caterpillar and Butterfly Craft
Hopefully your children have had a chance to see real caterpillars and butterflies outside. If not or if they want to take a closer look these butterfly sets are amazing! You can watch caterpillars go right through their lifecycle and emerge as beautiful butterflies to set free in your garden. I’d thoroughly recommend them, they’re a fantastic experience for children of all ages.
To make a caterpillar and butterfly craft you are going to wrap yarn scraps around a cardboard frame. Once children have seen real life caterpillars and butterflies they can sketch out their caterpillar and butterfly craft shapes onto strong cardboard and cut them out. We up-cycled an old packing box.
From observation my son knew that the caterpillar made “humps” as it moved along, so he bent the cardboard caterpillar to show this. To make the caterpillar head he curved over one end of the cardboard and taped it into place to make a hoop.
My son also noticed that the butterfly wings were symmetrical and tried to draw out each one to match. He wanted to add “feelers” (Antennae) but these were fiddly to cut so I needed to help with this bit. This caterpillar and butterfly craft idea gives us lots of opportunities to introduce and discuss formal body part names.
To turn the cardboard shapes into a beautiful colourful caterpillar and butterfly craft children wrap the yarn round and round the cardboard. This is great for building fine motor skills and hand-eye co-ordination.
Secure the first piece of yarn in place with sticky tape and start wrapping! Children can swap and change the colours as often as they like. Perhaps they’d like to copy the colours and patterns of real caterpillars they’ve seen outside or maybe make up their own wonderful caterpillar and butterfly craft design? To change yarn colour simply tie the new piece of yarn onto the end of the old piece.
Children can carry on wrapping the yarn around the cardboard until they have all the colours they want. To finish off simply tie the end of the yarn securely and tuck it in out of sight.
As a final touch to bring your wooly caterpillar craft to life you can stick on some goggly eyes and a little cheeky felt smile.
This is such a lovely yarn craft for kids to enjoy in the Spring and Summer months and goes so well with looking at real caterpillars and butterflies outside. You can see all our other favourite Animal and Insect Crafts here.
You might also like:
- Spring Flower Sensory Bottle
- Climbing Spider Craft
- Using A Microscope
- Learning About Wolf Spiders
- Learning About Bees
More Fun Spring Crafts For Kids:
