Quick Butterfly Craft from magazine pages

I thought I would write a post on a very easy and simple butterfly craft you can do with your children. All you need are scissors, magazines, a pipe cleaner, and fishing line (optional). At the time of this writing a Butterfly Blog Hop just went live at Plain Vanilla Mom and I wanted to submit this tutorial. You all should hop on over there and see what other ideas people came up with pertaining to butterflies.

I like this project because:

1. Children of all ages love it  
2. It reuses magazines that might otherwise be tossed  
3. It requires minimal preparation.

Children under 5 may need one-on-one assistance in helping with the folding and the cutting.

First have the children choose 2 magazine pages to use. I encourage them to look for pages that are brightly colored, or that have an interesting repeating pattern.

On the Paper #1 (the bottom set of wings) fold the paper in half. With scissors cut the corners so they are nice and rounded.

On Paper #2 (the top set of wings) Fold a triangle down and cut bottom strip, so that when it is unfolded it is a square.

When the pages are unfolded they should look like this.

Take Paper #1 and make an accordian fold going all the way up to the top of the paper.

 On paper #2 turn the paper diagonal and fold as shown.

I like to fold the resulting folded papers in half so I know where the center point is on each.

This is so easy! I like to attach a short length of fishing line to the butterflies with a loop on the other end so that the kids can "fly" them on the playground. This craft is always a big hit!

Thanks for coming by and checking this out. Remember to "like" me on my Facebook Page if you want to stay informed of more kid craft ideas I post or find around the blogosphere!