Earth Day Craft: Butterfly Collage

Earth Day is coming up and Rory and I have decided to make a few earthy  crafts for the next few weeks!   One thing we do, almost on a daily basis, is go on a nature walk.   Our nature walks range anywhere from our own back yard, picking out colors of flowers and watching squirrels, to going to a trail and picking up sticks (which we haven’t done in a while because of snakes!).   Whatever we choose to do we have fun looking at nature, picking out colors, and talking about anything and everything we see outside!

Plus, what better way is to teach your child about the letter e than teaching them about how amazing the Earth is. This could make a very educational e letter activity.

While we have been going on these nature hikes we have noticed the butterflies.   It was so cute to see Rory’s face when she first saw them; she looked at me like, These really do exist!    So I thought it would be fun if we could make butterflies with things in nature things we found in the yard.

Materials:

• random things in the yard that you can use to make butterflies
• sticks
• glue
• eyes
• paper

This was an extremely easy activity.   On our nature hike we gathered up sticks, tree buds, flower petals, and dandelions from outside.   When we got back to the house, we made the butterfly, I put glue in the shape of a butterfly on a piece of paper and let Rory sprinkle the tree buds (from the tree outside our house) on the glue.   (She is only 19 months so I had to make it a simple activity!)   When she was finished I put sticks around the leaves to show the outline of the butterfly.   We used a piece of bark laying on the ground for the butterfly body and then glued some eyes on it.   Rory’s new favorite thing to do outside is pick dandelions, so we had to add a few to the butterfly!

Keep in mind, this beautiful butterfly will not stay pretty forever, because it is made of leaves, flowers and twigs it will die soon (however for a few small hours it will be beautiful!).