A spring butterfly basket: hunt for a caterpillar or a nibbled leaf outside, then come home to paint butterflies, build a life-cycle wheel, finish a mirrored wing and wear a paper-roll butterfly on your wrist.
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The first butterfly of the year always gets announced at full volume. My middle one spots it, freezes, then whispers for the rest of us to come and look, and for about four seconds nobody moves.
This basket takes that four seconds and stretches it across a whole morning — go out and find the leaf with holes in it, then come home and watch the egg become a caterpillar become a chrysalis become the thing that flew past the window.
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Download the Butterfly printable pack below and print all 7 pages on plain white paper (cardstock holds up better for the wing pieces and the wheel).
The night before, tuck the printed pages, the paints, the scissors, the glue stick and the empty paper roll into the basket so it is waiting in the morning.
Start outside: walk slowly and look for a butterfly, a caterpillar, or — easiest of all — a leaf with holes chewed in it. A nibbled leaf is proof a caterpillar was there, and children love that.
Back at the table, open with the Paint me page. Six butterfly outlines, six chances to mix a colour nobody has ever seen before. Let this part take as long as it takes.
Cut out the four life-cycle pieces — eggs, caterpillar, chrysalis, butterfly — and glue them into the four quarters of the blank wheel, going round in order.
Push the split-pin through the centre of the finished wheel and through a paper arrow so your child can spin it and point at the stage they want to tell you about.
The mirror-effect page is the drawing challenge: each butterfly is missing half, and the job is to draw the other side to match. Fold the page down the middle first if your child wants to check the two halves line up.
Colour the anatomy page, matching each word to the colour of that part of the butterfly — legs, proboscis, antennae, wings, body and head.
Finish with the wearable one: colour and cut out the wing pieces, glue them to the sides of the paper roll, cut a slit down the length of the roll so it opens, and slide it onto a wrist.
If you set up the hatching kit, park it somewhere visible and check it together every morning until the butterflies come out and you can open the mesh in the garden.
Want more? Browse all our free printables for kids.
Print the Paint me page twice — the first one is practice and the second one is the good one, and knowing that takes all the pressure off. With a 3-year-old, do the wheel and the wrist butterfly and leave the mirror page for another day. With a 6- or 7-year-old, the mirror page is the whole activity. The hatching kit takes about three weeks from caterpillar to butterfly, so order it before you plan the morning.
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Wander through the Glimmers →