Fun Activities to Learn about Butterflies

Spring is a great time of year to talk about butterflies, whether you live where butterflies are migrating this time of year or not. Here are some fun resources, games and butterfly themed activities to help your kids learn about and explore the world of butterflies.

Learning Activities with Butterflies

Learn the basics of the life cycle of a butterfly with this collection of videos compiled by Simply Kinder. One or two of these would be a great way to kick off your studies.

Little Pine Learners has a gorgeous set of butterfly identification printables on their Teachers Pay Teachers page, plus a full blog post that shows you a bunch of different ways to use them. I love the idea of hiding the different butterflies outside for kids to find, then coming indoors to identify them.

These butterfly identification flash cards from Look We’re Learning are a fun way to learn about different kinds of butterflies, match them up and even play find the match in rice or another sensory material.

These free butterfly printables from Living Montessori Now are great to use when practicing letters and numbers. She has her own printables with a butterfly and the letter b and numbers 0-5, but the post links up more great butterfly letter resources too.

How Wee Learn has a great set of printable butterfly activity pages, including coloring sheets, anatomy, life cycle, color by number and complete the drawing pages.

ABCs of Literacy has a free printable playdough mat showing the parts of a butterfly, which is a good way to introduce little kids to those terms and let them play with making their own butterfly shapes with playdough.

This caterpillar to butterfly balloon experiment from The Educator’s Spin on It is a riff on the classic vinegar and baking soda reaction with a butterfly twist. A fun and easy way to make your butterfly “take flight” with items you probably already have in the house.

Homeschool Preschool has collected more easy butterfly STEM ideas for little learners.

Butterfly Art Activities and Games

Butterflies give us a fun way to talk about symmetry and to make a symmetrical, butterfly themed art project like this one from Simply Full of Delight.

Or make coffee filter butterflies, which is a classic, easy but always fun craft. Get the instructions from Organized Island.

Collect bits of leaves, grass, spring flowers and other things you find in nature on a nice day and make a sticky butterfly art piece like Happy Toddler Playtime did.

Nature Inspired Learning has a fun printable butterfly bingo card set, with 12 different cards full of colorful butterflies to match up.

Need more ideas for a day or a week of butterfly fun? Check out the ideas Glitter on a Dime used to make a week-long butterfly camp for their kiddos one summer.

Printable Butterfly Identification Cards

Butterfly Life Cycle Sensory Jars

Butterfly Suncatchers

Butterfly Life Cycle Craft

Lacing is a great fine motor activity, and most kids go through a phase where they enjoy working with lacing cards. It helps promote focus and is a great quiet activity for kids to do in the car or to fill time in the classroom. And of course knowing how to lace is the beginning of knowing how to sew, which is great for all kids to learn (more on teaching kids to sew here).

There are lots of ways to make your own lacing cards. This one is just a pin but it’s easy to make lacing cards with any shape a child is into using cardboard and a nail to poke the holes. This could be fun for letter and number recognition or spelling the child’s name. Or try this version from Hey Azka, which uses a hole punch to make bigger holes so you can lace with shoe laces.

You can also just do lacing cards with paper, but it’s a great idea to print them on card stock and/or laminate them to make them sturdier for little hands. Homeschool Share has a set of alphabet lacing cards, which are free with email signup. Deceptively Educational has a set of number lacing cards with numbers 0 to 10.

Picklebums has some basic shape lacing cards, too.

Living Life and Learning has a bunch of cute printable lacing cards, including back to school designs, shoes kids can lace and learn to tie and ocean themed lacing cards. She also has tips for making your own lacing cards.

A Rose Tinted World made their lacing cards with craft foam, which makes them a little more durable than paper and you can cut it more easily than cardboard. They used a die cutting machine but you can also cut shapes by hand.

I also love the cat and mouse cards from Seam Whisperer. They also have some spring themed designs. So cute!

If you want to make lacing cards that are more open ended, check out this tutorial form Pretty Life Girls to make lacing cards that are more like geo boards. Theirs are made with wood but you can also do this with cardboard, craft foam or card stock.

Learning Activities with Butterflies

Butterfly Art Activities and Games

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