Waiting For Wings

I picked up this book for our Bugs summer week.  The pictures were big and colorful and there were small pages between the big pictures. The kids had to find the small caterpillars and eggs which was fun for them.
It was a simple walk through of how a caterpillar gets it's wings with small words the kids could understand in preschool.  I also liked how the book illustrated how small caterpillars are in contrast to the world.  This was accomplished by having the span of the caterpillars life take place in a small area of a garden, using the small pages inside the big page.

After we read this book we made our own butterfly's. 

This is a very common simple craft. 

Materials: 

• coffee filter
• markers
• clothespin
• water (optional)
• pipe cleaner

First you decorate your wings.  It is difficult for preschoolers to keep to the same pattern for the wings like a typical butterfly, especially on a coffee filter.  While looking at the pictures of butterflies we discussed the patterns on their wings but for the craft The Dragons got creative with their wings. 

The boy dragons finished coloring their wings quickly and left a lot of white space.  We dropped some water onto the coffee filter to spread the color out a bit more and dim the sharp lines of the marker.  

The Dragons colored their clothespins and drew little faces on them. 

Lastly each dragon picked a color for the antennas and we added those by pinching them in the clothespin. 

When they were all finished we took the butterflies out to see the world! 

Thanks for reading!  Check out more of my bug activities here.