I have been seeing a million and one wonderful crafts, so why throw my recent adventure into the mix. I created this craft during a shared book reading task to give my children manipulatives to play with.
Materials:
- Green streamer (or green tissue paper cut into long strips)
- Googly eyes
- Brown Tissue to wrap the caterpillar (streamer) while it’s in the cocoon
- Tissue paper of various colors (cut/ripped into random shapes) for butterfly wings
- Construction paper butterfly (precut by therapist)
- First make the caterpillar by cutting a length of streamer (approximately 1 foot) and paste eyes onto it.
- Use the caterpillar throughout the book reading to eat all the foods in the book
- When the caterpillar gets larger in the book, have the kids wrap the caterpillar in brown tissue paper and put it to sleep in the cocoon.
- While “metamorphosis” occurs, decorate the wings of the butterfly with the tissue paper. You can have the kids follow a pattern of putting the tissue paper one (blue, red, green, blue, red, ____) and this task is also good for increasing fine motor control, as the kids have to take only one piece of tissue paper at a time, and sequence putting glue on the paper wings and then pasting the tissue paper down.
- Once the wings are complete the caterpillar is ready to come out of the cocoon and get to use his wings (paste the streamer onto the butterfly wings)
- TAH DAH!!!!
- Don’t forget to review the vocabulary related to butterflies, which will differ based on the age and target goals for each child.
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