This is part of a unit of the rain forest themed activities that will be shared in the next few weeks. The area of this unit features some fun animal crafts with finger plays or songs. One of my favorite rain forest animals is the blue morpho butterfly. Its wings are such a gorgeous color. I thought we would start with it.
Blue Morpho Butterfly Finger Play
A fun way to learn about an animal is through finger plays. Here is a fun finger play that shares a few things about the morpho butterfly.
Three Morpho Butterflies
Three morpho butterflies, gliding through the trees.(Join your hands together by your thumbs to make a butterfly. Flap your fingers like wings.)
The first one swooped down to take a look at me. (Make a diving motion with your butterfly hands.)
Three morpho butterflies, sitting on a leaf. (Hold up three fingers on a flattened hand.)
The second butterfly searched high and low for something sweet to eat. (Place a hand in front of your forehead and look around.)
Three morpho butterflies, flitting all around. (Join your hands together by your thumbs to make a butterfly again. Flap your fingers like wings.)
The third one landed on some fruit on the ground. (Pretend to eat a piece of fruit.)
Three morpho butterflies flit and flap away. (Join your hands together by your thumbs to make a butterfly again. Flap your fingers like wings.)
They will return to fly around on another day!
-Author Unknown
I found this finger play on Preschool Plan It and tweaked it a little.The original finger play was a little shorter so I added a closing set of verses. There were not any hand motions shared so I made up some to go with it. If you have blue morpho butterfly hand motions you think would be better, please feel free to use them instead.
Blue Morpho Butterfly Craft
I shared with you some hand motions that I thought would go along well with the finger play. You could have your children create a blue morph butterfly stained glass craft. They could use the butterfly to act out the various actions in the finger play.
This craft is super easy to make. Here is how we put our together:
- A piece of black paper is folded in half and butterfly wings are cut out of it.
- With the paper still folded in half cut out various shapes. You will need to bend in various sections of the folded paper to create shapes all over the butterfly.
- Have your children cut out the butterfly’s body out of black paper. You could cut the bodies out for them if you like. Antennae are tricky to cut out.
- Glue bright blue tissue paper to the back of the wings and the butterfly body to the front of the wings.
If you students want to learn more about rainforest animals, they may enjoy these books:
The Rainforest Grew All Around
Over in the Jungle: A Rainforest Rhyme
The Great Kapok Tree: A Tale of the Amazon Rain Forest
If you try this blue morpho finger play or craft , please leave me a comment below telling me about how it went or share a picture of your butterfly on my Facebook page.
I love how this looks with light shining behind it!