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

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Butterfly Learning Activities and Crafts

Human brains are pretty amazing, allowing us to think, feel, create, communicate, move and more. But humans aren’t the only animals with cool brains, as Crab Museum explains in the book The No-Brainer Brain Explainer (illustrated by Bruno Valasse).

This book, aimed at kids in grades 1-4, is colorful and silly but also educational about how brains actually work, with billions of neurons sending electrical and chemical signals around the body.

“Everything we think, feel and experience comes from an electrical relay race, with neurons passing chemical batons to each other,” the book says. “The constant chatter of billions of brain cells creates your entire world.”

The book compares the brains of mammals to those of crabs (the book is “written” by a crab after all) and notes that crabs have fewer neurons and of course are much smaller, but they have separate parts of their brains that control their eyes and their legs. Crabs are also capable of remembering things, using tools and solving puzzles.

Some animals’ brains allow them to know more about their world in different ways from humans, such as spiders being sensitive to vibrations in their webs and catfish having an amazing sense of taste, with taste sensors all over their bodies.

It notes that 95 percent of brain activity goes toward things we do unconsciously, like breathing, walking and catching a ball flying toward us. It also talks about dreams, memory, how our emotions try to predict the future, where brains came from and fun facts about brains. For example, did you know a sperm whale is believed to have the biggest brain of any creature that’s even lived? Their brains weigh 18 pounds, compared to just 2.5 pounds for humans.

Information on what creatures have the smallest brains, the toughest brains, the most brains and those who actually eat their own brains will delight kids (and maybe gross them out a little bit). They’ll also enjoy learning about the mycelium network of fungi, which is like a brain without a body, and slime molds, which are like a brain without a brain.

It ends talking about why human brains are so special because we’ve found ways to work together, communicate and build communities on a scale bigger than any other animal.

Kids and adults alike will enjoy this colorful, silly and informational book about brains!

About the book: 64 pages, hardcover. Published 2026 by Wide Eyed Editions. Suggested retail price $19.99.

Learning Activities with Butterflies

Butterfly Art Activities and Games

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