Painting Butterflies

Thanks to Mother Goose Time, Sweet Pea is obsessed with butterflies, 

which is perfectly fine with me. 

They're insects that I actually like.

My previous post was all about our caterpillar day, and naturally, 

the next day, we studied butterflies.

Mother Goose Time supplied this Invitation to Create, but you could easily do it at home.

Here's what you need:

-large sheet of white paper (11x14 or larger works great)

-tempra paints (or any you prefer...tempra comes out of clothes)

-painting supplies (brushes, sponges, whatever you want to use to put the paint on the paper)

-pictures of butterflies (discuss symmetry if child is old enough to understand)

When I set up her Invitation to Create, I made sure to already have her paper folded in half so that she would only apply paint to one side.  Later we flipped the other side on top of the paint to make our symmetrical butterfly painting. 

Here's what she did:

Sweet Pea used all the tools to apply the paint, but she definitely loved the sponge.

She dragged it across the paper and created stamping impressions with it as well.

Don't limit your child to just brushes! 

Anything could be used to apply paint, and you never know what surprise you might end up with.

I love that little line of orange dots Sweet Pea made with her paint brush.

Bringing the sponge back out this time to stamp rectangles.

Once Sweet Pea was done painting, I flipped the folded over white piece on top of her painting and told her to press hard and rub her hands all over the white paper.  This allowed the colors to blend together and really make a good symmetrical print onto the white paper.

Time to dry this beauty.

Here is her masterpiece hanging on the wall with all her other artwork.

I absolutely love it.  I feel like I could really cut around the colors to make a true butterfly shape, 

but I will not do that.  Maybe I'll buy a frame though.

We had a bunch of paint left over and Sweet Pea was all about painting some more, so 

she whipped out a few more butterfly prints.

Perfect gifts for grandparents.

Both grandparents have their butterfly paintings on their fridge.... the perfect artwork spot.

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