Butterfly Art, Writing, Poems, Freebies

Inside: A collection of poems, art ideas, and writing for a butterfly unit.

We’ve been learning about butterflies for the last couple of weeks so I wanted to share all the great things we’ve done!

Tie Dye Butterflies

I love this project and do it every year. The kids love it, too!

The first thing we do is colour round coffee filters using washable markers. Everyone colours two of them so that our butterflies have four wings. It doesn’t really matter how the kids colour them, as long as they use lots of bright colours. My students always end up drawing pretty designs.

In years past I’ve always dipped their filters into a bucket of water. But as you can imagine, it’s kind of a messy procedure. So this year I put the kids in charge. They took their filters outside and sprayed them down with water.

Then we let them dry. It always seems to be a windy day whenever I do this so we have to carefully anchor our filters. Some kids used large pine cones and others used the glass gems from the classroom.

They don’t take long to dry. After that we smoosh them together then carefully wrap the centres with pipe cleaners. With Grade 1 students I usually have to help them with this part, but happily there are always a few kids who catch on quickly and help me out with this job.

Aren’t they gorgeous?

Butterfly Life Cycle Writing

This next activity comes from Whimsy Workshop Teaching. It’s a math pack, but also includes some life cycle writing! All my students did really well with this!

Butterfly Life Cycle Paper Plates

This idea came from Buggy and Buddy and includes the template that’s glued into the middle. Isn’t it sweet?

It took quite a bit of prep (cutting the tissue, pipe cleaners, and construction paper), but it was totally worth the effort. I love that it uses real twigs and the little caterpillars are just so cute!

Math Symmetry

In math we talked about symmetry and how butterfly wings are symmetrical. Most of the kids understood the idea pretty quickly.

1. I gave everyone a butterfly template.
2. I modelled how to draw symmetrical designs.
3. The kids drew their designs in pencil first so that I could check them over.
4. Then they coloured them with their felt pens.
5. So simple, yet beautiful!

Free Butterfly Poems

Here are two very sweet butterfly poems for you. Just click on either image to grab.

Are you doing a butterfly unit?

Feel free to leave a link to your butterfly lessons in the comments.

Thanks for fluttering by!