butterfly Archives - JDaniel4s Mom

Butterfly Letter Tracing Activities

November 7, 2023 By Deirdre

Butterfly letter tracing activities focusing on uppercase and lowercase letters are in this set. There are half sheet mats for each of the alphabet letters. Two versions of each mat are in the set. The first version has a colored border. The second version has a black and white border. It will be up to you to decide which version you want to use.

While the set focuses on alphabet letters, the butterfly displayed also has tracing lines. It will be up to you to decide if you want your children to trace the butterful too. Parts of the butterfly may be hard for younger children to trace. You may want your children to trace just the wings or the body of the butterfly.

Getting the Butterfly Letter Tracing Activities

First, you will need to download the set.

Butterfly Letter Tracing Activities Download

Second, if you don’t have Acrobat Reader you will need to download it. The algorithm page is an Acrobat Reader PDF file.

Third, you must go to your download file and open the page. You may be asked if you want the file to open right after you download it. You won’t have to hunt for it in your download file if you are.

Making the Butterfly Letter Tracing Actvities Reusable

If you plan on using the tracing activities over and over again, you may want to laminate them. Below I have suggested products that you may want to use to cover them.

The links below are affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. My Amazon Picks

Scotch Brand PRO Thermal Laminator, Never Jam…$54.68~~$128.93~~ (11154)

Scotch Thermal Laminating Pouches, 100 Count-P…$15.98~~$24.68~~ (63556)

Scotch Thermal Laminating Pouches, 200- Count-…$27.99~~$42.99~~ (23612)

Hammermill Printer Paper, Great White 100% Recy…$17.00 (4917)AllAds by Amazon

Exploring the Letter Tracing Activities

Once you have decided on the letter and version of the tracing activity you want to use, you can get started. If you choose to use the pages as worksheets you print out enough for each of your children to use. However, you can use them as tracing mats in a writing center or with a small group. There really isn’t a wrong way to explore them.

More Alphabet Activities

Building Alphabet Letters

Click Clack Alphabet Learning Laptop Activity - This activity was created to go along with the book Click, Clack, Moo Cows That Type. It includes a monitor, keyboard, mouse, and alphabet letter cards.

Click Clack Moo Alphabet Letter Laptop

Alphabet Match with a Spider-Theme

Exploring Butterfly Symmetry with an Algorithm

April 28, 2022 By Deirdre

Exploring Butterfly Symmetry with an Algorithm activity set is part of a celebration of a week’s worth of bug and insect worksheets. Please check out the other bugs and insect printables in this series. The set has a lot of text on the Blockly coding blocks that feature each step of the coloring directions. This makes this set better for older children. However, there is a set of butterfly algorithm pages available here on the blog that will be great for younger children.

Getting the Butterfly Symmetry Set

This set is a PDF. When you download it, you will need to open it with a PDF reader. Acrobat Reader is a popular reader that you can download to use. You probably have it on your computer already.

Exploring Butterfly Symmetry with an Algorithm Set Download

Building Background

Before you start exploring the challenge cards, you may want to read a book that features symmetry. Below you will find a number of fun symmetry books.

The links below are affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

Exploring the Butterfly Symmetry Pages

You can work on these pages with your child or have them work on their own. If you haven’t read one of the books above, you will want to walk them through what symmetry is before they start coloring.

There are pages that have patterns on the butterfly’s wings and pages that don’t. You will need to decide if your children have a handle on symmetry or will need help with it.

More Algorithm Pages

Building Egg Carton Algorithm Activities

Magical Creatures STEM Coding Algorithm Drawing Activity

How to Draw a Cat with an Algorithm Using Looping

Drawing a Cat with a Looping Algorithm

Exploring Shapes on Mats with a Butterfly Theme

May 1, 2017 By Deirdre

This is the first in a series of five posts that featured insect or bug themed activity pages or printables. Today we will start by exploring shapes with this fun set butterfly themed mats. You will find four mats in the set.

The links below is an affiliate links.

Before you start the exploring shapes activity, you may want to read a butterfly themed book like The Very Hungry Caterpillar. After exploring this activity, you will find a number of activities based on that book created by other members of the Virtual Book Club.

Exploring Shapes

Getting the Exploring Shapes Mats

You will need to print out the Butterfly Shapes for Kids Printable Exploration Mats. While you could print them out in black and white, the color mats are more fun for kids to explore.

Gathering Shape Materials

Next, you will need to gather items that are circles, squares, triangles, and rectangles. If you know you don’t have any items at home for this activity, you could easily purchase a set of foam shapes for you children to use. You could also buy a package of foam sheets in a variety of colors and cut out the shapes for your children.

We found the following circular items at home:

caps
lids
glass pebbles
foam circles
buttons
pennies

We had a harder time finding the other shapes. Foam shapes were what we used for the other mats. Whoa! I should have looked through our LEGO bin! If you have a lot of LEGO at your house you will want to look through them for triangle, square, and rectangular shapes.

Activity Time

You can put out all the mats and shape items all at one time if you like. Your child can then decide what which one they want to explore. If you can work on one shape at a time if you like too. I would still put out a variety of shaped items. It will give your children a chance to work on their sorting skills.

Really young children would probably benefit from working with one shape and only items that are that shape.

Here are some other caterpillar themed activities based on The Very Hungry Caterpillar created by other Virtual Book Club members:

Blue Morpho Butterfly Finger Play and Craft

May 21, 2015 By Deirdre

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:

A Rainforest Habitat

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.

4th of July Butterfly Count Activities for Kids

June 28, 2013 By Deirdre

I didn’t realize that there were locations around the United States that hold an annual butterfly site count on of the 4th of July at until we read the book Butterfly Count by Sneed Collard III (2002-03-01). Butterfly Count is the story of a little girl named Amy and how she and her mom participate in a butterfly count.

Amy and her mother find a wonderful variety of butterflies during their butterfly site count. They even find a very rare butterfly that many had thought was no longer in the area. What a wonderful way to spend the 4th of July.

This wonderful story teaches children how to attract and identify butterflies where they live. It also gives you information on finding 4th of July Butterfly Site Count sites near you hosted by the North American Butterfly Association. I wasn’t able to find one near us maybe you will be able to find one near you.

Butterfly County Extension Activities

Butterfly Wing Experiment

This experiment using several layers of tissue paper, construction paper and a balloon was to explore how static electricity stored in a balloon can be transferred to tissue paper. During the transfer of electricity, the wings of the tissue paper butterfly would flap just like a real butterfly.

We started by cutting the outline of a butterfly out of tissue paper that had been layered to give us several layers of tissue to flap when the balloon was stroked over it.

{4th of July} Butterfly Site Count- Read.Explore.Learn.

The tissue layers were then stapled to a piece of construction paper.( Next time I think we will staple our butterflies to cardboard. It would give them some more support.)

We started the experiment with six layers of tissue we soon learned that that was way too many layers. Only the top two layers of wings flapped. We pulled some of the tissue butterflies of the stack. The remaining butterfly layers flapped or lifted up more easily when we rubbed a balloon over the tissue. Rubbing the balloon on your head and then the tissue butterflies really helped the wings to flap. We had a great time exploring electricity with this experiment.

Butterfly Sight Word Match

We are still working on sight words here. We probably will be working on them all summer. I wrote some of JDaniel’s sight words onto butterfly cutouts and on a piece of large white paper.

I asked him to read me the word on each butterfly and then find its match on the paper. When he had found all the matches, I had him remove each word butterfly and read it to me.

Butterfly Number Count

This was so easy to put together. I just placed the butterfly outline from the first activity under a piece of copy paper. Then I wrote groups of number JDaniel has trouble with in the butterfly shape on the white copy paper.

I put various colors of bingo markers on cards featuring each number. JDaniel was to use that stamp to place dots on that number to create a beautiful butterfly. After or before stamping each number, JDaniel read me that number. Yes, it was a lot of repetition, but he sometimes he forgets what these numbers are. I was hoping to put them into muscle, visual and auditory memory.

Here are some more butterfly activities:

Blue Morpho Finger Play and Craft

Making a Butterfly Bento Lunch

How did you explore books this week? If you have a post you would like to share, please link it up below. Once you have added your post, please visit at least three others.

Healthy Snack for Kids : Butterfly Bento

April 8, 2013 By Deirdre

Healthy Snack for Kids - Butterflies in a Bento

We visited the Tennessee Aquarium while we were away for Spring Break. At the top of the new aquarium building was a butterfly garden. JDaniel had a wonderful time chasing them around. He also enjoyed seeking them out under leaves and behind trees. It was amazing to see the wide variety of butter flies they had living there. In honor of our visit with butterflies I made JDaniel a healthy snack for kids butterflies in a Bento.

The butterfly was cut out of a flour tortilla free hand. It might have looked better if it had been cut using a cookie cutter, but we didn’t have one large enough for a sandwich.

The butterfly’s wing design was made using pepperoni and tomatoes layered. JDaniel really isn’t into lunch meat right now. I do still include it in lunches just encase he decides he likes it again. The body of the butterfly is made of a slice of cheese cut into the body of the butterfly. Small pieces of cheese are the butterflies antennas.

There is also a small butterfly created using a clementine orange and a blueberries. If you follow this blog regularly, you know that JDaniel hasn’t been big on carrots. I do keep trying to put them in snacks and lunches. This time the carrot was paired with a slice of cucumber.

This snack Bento isn’t filled to the brim with food and I did that on purpose. A small snack seems to leave JDaniel hungry for lunch or dinner later. If this snack had included a whole clementine with 12 blueberries, carrots with dip and a fully decorated butterfly, JDaniel would have been full at mealtime.

If JDaniel is full at meal time, he tends to want to take tiny bites of food and then flutter around the room. I would rather that he eat his meal and nibble on a snack.