Today I want to share with you a beautiful craft that we did making butterfly sun catchers using petals! As flowers have been on the turn in the garden I have been regularly de-heading plants which has encouraged lots of new growth. It stops the energy from going into stems that are dying off and instead that energy goes into the new shoots and stems.
As many of the petals are still pretty beautiful I like to use them in crafts and activities before they head to the gardening recycle bin.
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Remember to come and see us on Instagram too for simple play ideas.
Have you visited our brand new shop? Filled with fun, educational play resources?
I am sharing on our stories on Instagram lots of simple play ideas so make sure you're following us over there too. This week this post went CRAZY over there with lots of people saying they were going to try it out too.
I used our colourful sorting bowls to collect lots of lovely colourful petals in the garden. I popped the filled bowls into our activity bag and off we went to Dudmaston National Trust for a day out. I love crafting with the children outdoors. It's so calm! After our picnic we set about making these lovely butterfly sun catchers!
I had already cut out the butterfly templates onto some recycled cardboard. I used my Stanley craft knife which has been a god sent for preparing activities like this. Saving my lots of time and effort! It was just £2 from the craft store.
I had printed out a template online and used that to trace around. Cutting out the shapes before cutting out windows for the wings where the petals would lie.
I had also cut some of the self adhesive vinyl down into butterfly shapes so that they would stick onto the cut out templates and be good to go. I placed the bowls out for the children and they set to work right away.
The clip boards were great at holding the craft in place. We use them a lot. We got these from Sainsburys.
There was lots of talking about shapes, patterns and colours they could see. They were counting how many of certain ones they had used.
It didn't take long at all for them to create their beautiful butterfly sun catchers. They came together quickly and looked amazing!
Lets see this activity in action:
I love how the different flowers used really made them all beautiful and unique. Once all the petals were stuck in place we coloured in the centre of the butterflies using a sharpie pen.
To my suprize too they have been up in my window for 2 weeks now and the petals look like they were only taken from the plants today! They have kept well preserved! The colour is still gorgeous and I love how they all look when there is a blue sky out there and the sun is shining through them!
A little activity that took a few minutes to put together and using predominately recycled items. It used up some of my cardboard stash (James will be pleased) and it was a fun way to use the petals from the flowers that I had been busy de-heading.
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