If I Were a Butterfly..

Mar 23, 2017
2 min read

Updated: Sep 2, 2022

"The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough." ~Rabindranath Tagore

Oh, the wonder of a butterfly. It is one of the smallest creations of beauty , floating from flower to flower as a subtle reminder that spring has come. Children are fascinated with their whispering presence...and grown ups are too.

They taste with their feet and smell with their antennae. Hmmm..try imagining that! We chuckled with the kids at the thought of tasting a friend's food...with our feet!.

We wanted to do a collaborative art project with our young preschool group and came up with this crazy idea - a "me" sized butterfly canvas. We started with some simple supplies- two yards of cloth canvas and some colorful acrylics.

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We drew an outline of a butterfly's shape and let the children begin painting as they chose. The first group wanted to start with a cotton candy pink.

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The children enjoyed getting low to the ground for this project. I think the adults had a little fun with it also.

For the large portions of the butterfly, we wet the canvas first small pieces at a time. We wanted the colors to merge and flow together so this technique seemed to do the job. We taught the children the "dab". The art dab that is...

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The butterfly slowly started to emerge from its canvas cocoon.

We also planned to photograph each child as they took turns being the butterfly so we decided to not paint the thorax. They could not wait for the butterfly to dry !

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During the process, we built team working skills and collaboration. They discussed their color choices with one another and worked together on blending them together.

The painting portion of the project took three days to complete. We got a little messy, but made a lot of memories too!

They worked so hard on the canvas mural. Who says learning can't be fun and creative. We are so proud of their project and will be hanging it on our gallery wall!