Simple Coffee Filter Butterfly Craft and Other Spring Learning Activities
It’s officially the first day of Spring! I can’t wait for the weather to start warming up where I live so I can start gardening and planting flowers! While I’m waiting for it to look like Spring outside, my son and I had some fun bringing some spring colors to the house with this adorable coffee filter butterfly craft. It’s such a simple craft for kids, and a great way to add a fun artistic activity to your Spring and Summer learning curriculum. That’s why I also have an awesome Spring freebie at the bottom of this post from Education.com!This post was written in partnership with Education.com. It also contains affiliate links, which means I may earn a commission if you click a link (at no additional cost to you). Thanks for your support!
One of the things I love most about this coffee filter butterfly craft is that it’s made with supplies I already had laying around the house. And it’s simple enough for a young child to make, but also fun for the older kids because they can customize it however they like! Think of all the beautiful designs your kids can create on the butterfly’s wings or the caterpillar’s body!
Like I mentioned earlier, this simple coffee filter butterfly craft uses a handful of common craft items and one common household item. In fact, I’m pretty sure you could grab any of these items at the dollar story if you’re missing one of them! To make these cute butterflies, you’ll need coffee filters, watercolor pants, pony beads, and pipe cleaners.
The first step is the most fun — paint the butterfly’s wings. I suggest putting the coffee filter on a paper plate or other nonporous surface because the watercolor paints will soak right through the coffee filter. To make our wings, we painted a rainbow of colors all the way around the coffee filters. Younger kids will probably have fun smearing the paint all over the coffee filter, while older kids might enjoy learning about patterns on different butterflies in the wild. The choices are endless!
While you’re waiting on the paint to dry, you can start constructing the caterpillars. We matched the color of the pipe cleaner to the color of the beads and counted 10 beads per caterpillar. To make sure the beads stayed put, we simply bent the pipe cleaner in half and stacked the beads on the fold. The color matching is a great opportunity to help younger kids learn colors and counting, while older children might enjoy creating patterns with the beads instead.
When your paint is dry, it’s time to construct your butterfly. Scrunch up the coffee filter in the middle, the slide it into the middle of your folded pipe cleaner with the beads on top. Twist the top ends of the pipe cleaner a few times to tighten and hold the coffee filter in place.
To finish this coffee filter butterfly, you need to make the antennas! To make the spirals, twist the top ends of the pipe cleaner around a pencil, then pull the pencil out. And there you have it! A beautiful coffee filter butterfly that was simple and fun to make!
There are so many ways to incorporate this fun craft into your Spring or Summer learning activities. Add it to a theme on Spring, gardening, butterflies, summer, insects…there are so many options! Keep scrolling to find another fun activity to add to whatever educational activities you’re planning.
In addition to having fun making these adorable butterflies, your kids can also have fun searching for prepositions in an awesome worksheet available to you for free. The word fine features some cute critters for preposition practice and are the perfect compliment to this simple craft! Be sure to check out Education.com for more fun learning resources. The sight is an awesome place to find worksheets for any theme or occasion.
To score your awesome free printable word find, simply click the link below to download. That’s it! And don’t forget to sign up for my email newsletter for more awesome freebies like this!
[download id=”1098″] | [download id=”1095″]
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Emily is a midwestern mom of two boys. She loves all things DIY — from home renovations to kids birthday party planning. Whether she’s making a new farmhouse craft for her home or helping her kids with a cool activity, you can bet she’s in the middle of some kind of DIY project (or three) right now!
This looks like a super fun craft! I have two small boys who would love this – I haven’t tried painting with coffee filters before so will definitely give it a go 🙂
these are so cute. thanks for joining #bloggerpinparty
These are too cute! I did something similar with my kindergarten class at church the other night, and they loved watching the colors run together!
It is fun to watch the colors run together. And they turn out beautifully when it dries too.
I home school preschool my youngest. We are always on the hunt for new and fun ideas. I can’t wait to try out these with her. Thank you for the post.
This would make a great home school preschool craft. Have fun making it!
My kids have made this craft before They look cute and you can use a close pin for the body and clip them to things.
A close pin as the body is a great idea! It would make it easier to display them when you’re done.
I love how simple this craft is! And super cute!
It is super simple, but still adorable. Thanks for reading!
Super cute! My son made this before at pre-school, thanks for instructions so we can make this fun craft at home too!
I’m happy you’ll be able to make this craft with your son. I’m sure you’ll both have fun doing it!