Butterfly Garland

We have been so spoilt with lots of lovely sunshine in May, that todays rain came as a bit of a shock! We have been following a beautiful Nature Curriculum called Exploring Nature With Children where you get a subject prompt each week & this week's prompt is "Butterflies". We planned a lovely long walk so we could see how many butterflies we could identify, but the rain had other ideas, so we decided to bring the butterflies indoors!

Here's what we did...

Take a some sheets of A4 paper (we used three sheets of recycled Kraft paper). Fold them in half, then in half again. Cut along the two centre lines so as to create four separate pieces of folded paper.

We then used our fingers to paint patterns on one half of the card, then folded the paper, patted it down & opened it up to reveal a mirror image of the pattern, just like butterfly wings!

We were amazed at how different each one looked even though we used the same colours & the same fingers!

Once the paint had dried, we folded them in half again & used a stencil in the shape of a butterfly wing to ensure all of our butterflies were the same size & shape...

We then paired up the butterflies ensuring their pretty patterns were facing outwards & sewed them together, leaving a little gap between each pair of butterflies to create a string of unique butterflies!

Finally open the wings slightly & hang your butterfly garland somewhere the butterflies will know they are always welcome flutter by, even when it rains!