Butterflies and Caterpillars



For the first of the butterflies you will need a toilet paper roll, construction paper, a large craft stick, and a pipe cleaner. Crayons, markers, glue, and scissors will also be to make the wings.

Decorate the toilet paper roll and set it aside.

Cut out the wings and decorate them. If you notice on the picture, the ‘body’ has been left as part of the wings, that is what the stick will be glued to and the pipe cleaner attached to, although you can glue these items separately.

Alternate: Glue each wing onto the stick separately. Hot glue the pipe cleaner to the under side of the craft stick. Glue goggle eyes on the front of the stick.

Glue the wings to the stick; punch a hole in the top of the ‘body’. Put the pipe cleaner through the hole and twist a few times. Shape the antenna as desired.

Then put the butterfly into its ‘home’.


For the second butterfly you need a coffee filter, a clothes pin, a Q-tip for each color she wanted to use, an adhesive magnet and we used food coloring (markers or watercolors would probably work). You will also need a safe place to work on so that the food coloring doesn’t ruin anything. I used a paper plate and then threw it away. You could also lay down wax paper.

These butterflies are so easy to make you can make a whole ‘flock’ of them in no time.

Put the filter on the plate. My daughter held out the Q-tip and I put on the color she wanted. She drew her design and we let it dry.

We put the magnet on the back of the clothes pin and when the filter was dry we scrunched it in the middle and clipped it.

Alternate: Get the coffee filter wet and wring it out. Spread it out and drop the food coloring on to it making your design.


The picture to the right shows two different kinds of caterpillars. The top two are similar. The top one has ‘legs’ added. These caterpillars are decorated white paper plates. One is connected using brads and the other has been individually put on the wall. The ‘head plate’ has a pom-pom glued on for the nose. You could glue on goggle eyes or just draw them with a marker. A pipe cleaner was used for the antenna.

The bottom caterpillar was made using clipart found in a book and copied onto construction paper. For this style you can mix and match when making this. If you have a clipart book you might see a bug with the kind up face you want, you can use a cloud for the body segments and use the tail of a snake.

Use your imagination and have fun when you’re creating your creatures.




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