Butterfly Crafts for Kids

A few years ago I did a post about learning activities related to butterflies, but it didn’t include butterfly crafts, so let’s take a look at some fun butterfly crafts to do alongside your butterfly unit study or for summer.

A yarn butterfly is a classic craft, and kids can make it their own by using different colors of yarn, pipe cleaners, beads, etc. Get the instructions from The Craft Train. They’ve also got a fun idea of making butterfly prints using a sponge — so pretty!

Using a sponge to make a print is sort of like doing a mirror painting, and you can do that directly on the paper with this craft idea from What A Mom Needs, which turns the symmetrically painted butterfly into a wand. A free butterfly template is included in the post.

Another take on yarn and butterflies are these yarn wrapped butterflies from School Time Snippets. This is a great upcycling project and a way to use a bit of your yarn stash at the same time.

Suncatchers are another classic craft for summer or any time of year, and this butterfly shaped suncatcher from Jasmine Ansah is a great one for kids to try. She uses a butterfly printed on regular paper as the template but you could also cut out a butterfly shape in sticky backed paper to make it more translucent if you like. Or you can make it with a plastic sheet protector like this version from The Craft at Home Family.

Make a pretty flapping butterfly craft with the template and instructions from Moms and Crafters. There’s a little bit of engineering involved with this one, so little kids might need some help, but it’s worth the work because it’s so cute in the end.

These cardboard tube butterflies from The Best Ideas for Kids are super cute and you might already have everything you need to make them. If you don’t have colored cardstock kids could also color or paint paper to make the wings.

I Heart Crafty Things has so many cute butterfly crafts I couldn’t decide which one to share, so be sure to check out their neon butterflies made with liquid watercolors and neon glitter, as well as the versions made with watercolor and black glue and painting on newspaper.

Butterfly Bead Bookmark for Kids

Butterfly Life Cycle Sensory Jars

Printable Butterfly Identification Cards

Butterfly Suncatchers

Kids all seem to go through a phase of loving trivia, and if you’ve got kids who want to know about the tallest, biggest and weirdest things in nature, they’ll enjoy the book Once in a Blue Moon by Emily Hawkins.

The book explores wonders of astronomy, meteorology, big trees, weird animals, volcanoes and more to show off the rarest events and phenomena in the natural world.

Kids ages 7-10 will learn about the lake (Lake Hillier, on an island off Australia) that has water that’s bubblegum pink, the world’s deepst came (Veryovkina Cave in the country of Georgia) and the world’s biggest tree, a banyan in southeast India with a canopy that covers more than five acres!

Readers will learn what a blue moon is, how supernovas happen and about Haley’s comet and solar eclipses, among other space-related phenomena. Closer to home they’ll learn about stinky flowers, bleeding trees, glowing fungi and pizzly bears.

There’s content about times when it’s rained frogs (and when frogs have exploded en masse), when snow made giant snowballs all by itself and how clouds stack on themselves like pancakes. The book also explores ball lightning, sun dogs, St. Elmo’s fire and more.

I love books like this and I know kids do, too. There’s so much weird and wonderful about our world and even as adults we don’t know about all of these things. I found it fun to learn, for example, that there’s a volcano on the island of Java that not only sends out blue flames from vents near its crater, it’s also home to an acidic lake.

Illustrations by Vlad Stankovic illuminate these weird natural wonders and are sure to get kids interested in learning more about some of these remarkable animals, plants, rock formations and more.

About the book: 80 pages, hardcover. Published 2026 by Wide Eyed Editions. Suggested retail price $30.

Have you read?

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