Butterfly Puppets

This was one of those activities that wasn't intended to start or end in us "making" anything in particular. It simply began with my desire to try out salad spinner painting with Bean, which is something i'd been familiar with for a while but had been saving for when she had the dexterity to work the spinner alone. For those of you who haven't tried it yet, it's both incredibly simple and super fun to do (two prerequisites for all activities at our house!). All you need is:

• Salad spinner (I got ours at a dollar store)
• Poster paint
• Paper cut into a size that will fit into the bottom of the spinner

I cut the paper into butterflies and diamonds, simply because they were the first shapes that came to mind when i was folding the paper in half!

Place a paper shape in the bottom of the spinner and then add a few colors of paint...

...This was our first attempt and we placed each colour separately, which after being spun turned out like this...

...I was disappointed that the colours hadn't mixed at all during the spinning, so then we tried adding the paint in swirls one colour on top of another, which turned out like this...

...and this...

...Much more what I had in mind! ;-)

The finished batch looked really beautiful and was put to dry overnight. This brings me to another important point about the paint addition...don't add too much! Otherwise it will sit on the surface after spinning, soak through the paper and/or take FOREVER to dry.

I was really happy with the way they turned out, and Bean had a great time using the salad spinner, but I didn't really want the process to end there. Then came a flash of inspiration! (don't you love it when that happens??)

Puppets! We would make the butterflies into puppets! So I gathered some supplies from the craft boxes - drinking straws for the bodies, pipe cleaners for the antenna, and sellotape to secure.

Bean LOVED it. She helped select which bodies and antenna went with which wings...

...and spent ages putting the pipe cleaners in and out of the straws (great threading and co-ordination practice!) which required some extreme concentration...

I twisted the two pipe cleaners together to fit into the straw and then taped the straw to the wings leaving more straw length at the bottom so that it could be held as a puppet.

The wings flapped beautifully, and Bean proceeded to do a butterfly dance...

"Flutter Flutter!" "Flap Flap!"

This activity evolved into something completely unexpected, and so much better than my original plan. Sometimes all we need is an open heart and a little inspiration to find our wings and fly...

Happy Playing!

Bxx