Simple and Cute Butterfly Craft for Kids

My daughter, Kia, loves everything that can fly and is obsessed with the thought of being able to fly for quite some time now. Very often, she comes to me and says she would love to fly if she could. Seeing how much she loved the idea of spreading her wings and gliding through the air freely, I asked if she would like to make a few crafts related to it. And I guessed it right! She was super excited about it as it involved two of her favorites – things that can fly and crafts.

So here I present to you the ‘Wish I Could Fly’ series of arts and crafts. In this post and my next few, I will be sharing all the crafts I do with my little one to fuel her imagination about flying.

Butterflies are kids all-time favorites and are one of the things that make them go ‘wow!’. They love to watch them, touch them, and follow them around. This craft is for all the butterfly lovers out there. It’s easy to make and cute!

Here are step by step instructions to help you and your kid make this fun butterfly craft.

Things you will need:

Two A4 size colored sheets (we have used blue and yellow)
One popsicle stick
Four cotton swabs
One pair of googly eyes
One black marker
Sticky gems for decoration
Scissors
Glue

Method:

Take A4 size colored sheets and cut them in halves with a pair of scissors. We used blue and yellow sheets for our butterfly, as blue and yellow are Kia’s favorite colors. You can also pick your kid’s favorite color for this craft. Don’t have their color in stock? Go ahead and choose sheets in any color combination from the ones you have at home. Butterflies are beautiful in every color.

Take one half of each colored sheet and fold it over.

Now draw the shapes as shown in the image. You can either let your kid draw them or lend them some help in this step.

Cut out the shapes with scissors. When cut, open the folds to see two lovely pairs of butterfly wings. Set these aside till we get other things ready for the craft.

Take a small piece of unused paper (in our case, yellow, to match the smaller sized wings). Draw the shape as shown in the image, and cut it out. It will serve as a butterfly’s head.

Similarly, draw and cut two thin rectangles, as shown above, to resemble a butterfly’s antennae. Cutting out these tiny antennae can be a bit difficult for your little one as it involves some precision, but a little help from mommy or daddy can get this done.

Next, take four cotton swabs and cut them into halves. You will have a total of eight pieces that will be used for decorating butterfly wings.

Now is the time to assemble our flying beauty! Open the bigger set of wings and lay it flat on your work table. Use a glue stick to apply glue along the line of the fold. Stick the smaller set of wings onto it.

Once again, apply glue along the line of the fold and place a popsicle stick over it. Make sure the popsicle stick is glued well onto the paper by applying some pressure.

Apply glue on the topmost portion of the popsicle stick and paste the small head you cut out earlier.

Pick a half-cut cotton swab and spread glue all over it on one side. Paste swab with the glued portion sticking to the paper. It is better to use liquid glue instead of a glue stick for this step as it gives the swab a better hold onto the paper. Paste all cotton swab halves on smaller wings as shown in the image.

Next, paste antennas to the butterfly head and let your kid add some sticky gems to make them look sparkly.

Cut out two small circles from the leftover sheet (we again used yellow to match the inner wings) and glue them to the outer corners of larger wings. Add in funny googly eyes on the butterfly’s head and use a black marker to make a cute little smile!

Your butterfly is now ready!

Kia and I made two of these. However, she was still not satisfied with the final look. So she decided to paste two more gems on the wings. And Viola! Now her butterfly looked perfect to her!

Your kid’s version of perfection could be different. Let them use their imagination to decorate and make their perfect butterfly!

Crafting is one of the best ways to spend quality time with kids at home. I hope you enjoy making this easy butterfly craft with your kid as much as I did with mine!