Butterfly Garland

I wanted some decorations for Little's Hungry Caterpillar themed birthday party and thought a paper butterfly garland would be pretty. It turned into a great art activity for Poppet! I found a butterfly template online (as I am terrible at drawing) and used this to trace a butterfly onto a thick wad of paper (wallpaper lining) that I had accordion folded. It was really thick and hard to cut but Poppet loved her butterflies "holding hands" and she really enjoyed having something different to paint. 

I put our wipe-clean tablecloth on the floor to give her a surface to work on along with all our painting utensils and a variety of colours of paint. This was different from our usual painting set up and made a very inviting invitation to create. Poppet was completely absorbed by it.

Halfway through painting the butterflies she got distracted by painting her hands and feet so they were "all lovlee and sparklee, look mum!"; she spent ages painstakingly covering every inch of her hands and feet with her beloved glittery paint. Once she was happy with her level of sparkliness she returned to decorating the butterflies.

I helped decorate a few butterflies (I hope it is obvious which ones have benefited from adult input), and then Poppet made sure there was no white paper still showing with her finishing touches. 

They looked beautiful and Poppet had a great afternoon making them. I would say it was her favourite painting project yet and she can been asking to do painting lots more since we did them.

They made a nice addition to the fireplace at Little's birthday party and I plan to put them up in the girls' bedroom, they are just too nice to put away!

Poppet 2 yrs 9mos

Little: 1yr