Butterfly Snack Craft

I had seen an idea on Pinterest that looked neat for butterfly snack bags. So, when I saw that Joshua and Caleb both had a turn to take snack close to each other in the spring, I thought this might be a great time to attempt and make it. The week before, Joshua's class had done a unit on bugs and such and that week the lessons were on birds. So, I thought it fit.

The first thing we did was purchase the clothes pins at Walmart while we were shopping over the weekend. I got the cheapest wooden ones for around $1. That Sunday, April 22, the boys & I painted the clothes pins together. Caleb liked painting the stick all one color, and I would put designs on his. Joshua got the hang of making his own designs. It was actually fun!

I put on an old plastic table cloth on our beat-up old table, and then we still used large papers (I think they were the packing papers from Grandma Kennel's apartment?) to put our painted sticks on for less mess.

The colors we had were blue, red, green, and yellow, and I also mixed an orange and purple up. We had one paintbrush per color so we would trade back and forth.

Even Daddy painted a couple at the end, but mostly the boys worked on them. :)

Here's Joshua showing off one of his creations:

Here are some of the sticks that are sitting and waiting to dry. Joshua was so excited that we were going to turn these into butterflies. He showed them to Mamaw & Papaw when they came to visit that night. :)

After they dried, the next day we added googly eyes with glue to them. The directions said to add them to the pincher part, but I found it easier to do it to the opposite end, for what it's worth to anyone looking to try the craft.

We had lots of goldfish, so I tried to think of an idea for the other side that wouldn't require refrigeration. I wanted to make them in advance (we always have enough to do to get ready in the mornings). The original picture I was looking at showed grapes, but I thought if I put them in the fridge the goldfish would get stale. And, I didn't want the preschool teacher to have to put them in the fridge either. The school requires two types of snack to be brought in, so I opted for yogurt covered raisins for the other side. I think Shawn bought yogurt-covered craisins and they were great!

We bought snack-size ziplock baggies, filled one half with goldfish and the other half with the yogurt-covered raisins, sealed them, then twisted the middle and clipped them with the now-dried clothespin with eyes. Then we twisted our pipe-cleaners to make them look like antennae and hooked them in the treat.

Joshua had 18 students in his class, so we made quite a few of them to take into preschool on Tuesday, April 24. Since I was sick that morning, Shawn took them in. Caleb had snack day on Wednesday, May 9, so we made more for his class the day before (using the clothespins we had already painted but creating the rest fresh).

I also had made a couple putting chocolate chips in one side along with thank you cards for Caleb's Bible study teachers, but alas, I never got to give them to them because I was too sick to go in and the time has ended that I wouldn't even know how to reach them to give them at least the thank you cards for volunteering all year. I don't even know their last names. But, I was blessed by their faithful service all year!

Anyway, this was another fun craft to do together. The boys enjoyed the painting and seeing the butterfly transformation. They also enjoyed eating the snacks since we made a couple extra for them to enjoy at home as well. :) :) :)