Easy Coffee Filter Butterfly Craft for Young Kids
Looking for a cool butterfly craft that’s easy for any age child to complete? Try this easy peasy butterfly that’s perfect for springtime, holidays, or just rainy days.
Coffee Filter Butterflies
This easy craft is so much fun to make for kids and easy to execute for adults. All you need is a few simple supplies, and these colorful butterfly crafts will come to life! Try this fun activity for the spring season.
Simple Craft for Young Kids
While this craft can be done by kids of all ages, this is a great way to create a cute butterfly craft with kids as young as toddlers. This coffee filter butterfly craft is easy enough for early learners and will still come out looking super cute!
This craft is also a great way to incorporate fine motor skills into art time! The coloring, spraying water, and twisting pipe cleaners are all fun ways to build hand-eye coordination, improve control, and strengthen the small muscles of the hands and fingers.
When To Do These Paper Butterflies
This fun craft works for so many different times! This is usually with our spring crafts, but it would also be a great creative activity for a summer craft. It’s also a great craft for a butterfly or bug unit.
Another perfect way to use this craft is with an Eric Carle craft to go along with his books, especially The Very Hungry Caterpillar. The butterfly wings in this craft resemble something you would see in an Eric Carle book.
This year, we used this craft to help decorate for Easter!
Easy Step-By-Step Instructions
First, gather all the craft supplies you’ll need including markers, coffee filters, a water spray bottle, a plastic or metal tray (like a cookie sheet), and pipe cleaners.
1. Color the Coffee Filters
The best part about this craft is how easy it is! Easy butterfly crafts are exactly what we were looking for with toddlers. Let your little kids color all over the coffee filters with marker.
Our only advice is to not use dark color markers like black or brown. We did use a small amount of purple and blue in some of them, but the bright colors work better!
2. Spray with Water
Once the coloring is complete, place the coffee filter on a plastic or metal tray. You can do about three at the same time, slightly overlapping, if you have more than one. Then, take a spray bottle of water and spray your coffee filters.
You can let your child help you spray the coffee filters to get even more fine motor practice. Just make sure the entire coffee filter is wet.
3. Accordion Fold
Next, you fold the entire coffee filter like an accordion. Older kids can complete this step on their own, but the young ones will need help. You can still keep them involved by having them run their finger along the fold as you make the fold.
4. Pipe Cleaner Body
Lastly, take a pipe cleaner and twist it around the middle of the folded coffee filter. You just need a few twists, and then cut off the extra. Just leave a little extra for antenna!
Then, pull apart the folds to expand the butterfly’s wings. And that’s it for this cute little butterfly craft!
Fantastic Fun with Butterflies
The best thing about this craft is that no matter the skill levels of children making them, you can’t really mess them up! No matter what the coloring looked like in the beginning, you’ll get beautiful butterflies.
This beautiful butterfly craft is a fun way for kids of all ages involved in butterfly activities. As a fun spring craft or random craft project, this butterfly is a classic!
More Springtime Crafts
Check out more of our favorite springtime crafts like these celery stamping flowers! Or this adorable handprint flower painting for even the littlest kids!
Coffee Filter Shamrocks
Need to use more of those coffee filters? Try another version of this fun craft, but with shamrocks! Check it out here.
