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Caterpillars, Chrysalis and Butterflies…Oh My!

Akane Everitt
CraftsScience4 Comments 2


One of our favorite books to read at our house is “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” by Eric Carle.  So my kids and I did a cute craft that goes through all the stages from caterpillar to chrysalis and then to butterfly.

During the last week of August last year, the caterpillars I ordered through the Insect Lore were delivered to our house.  I held off blogging about it, since winter was approaching and I figured not many would be interested in reading my post. But now that spring is right around the corner I figured I’d share with you our fun crafts that we did while watching these caterpillars morph into butterflies.
My kids were completely fascinated watching this process and I highly recommend it to anyone contemplating whether to purchase the live butterfly garden kit.

Supplies:

  • Egg carton
  • Scissors
  • Paint
  • Black pipe cleaner
  • Eye stickers or googly eyes
  • Construction paper
  • Marbles
  • Paper lunch sack
  • 9×13″ pan or a plastic container

Directions:

Here my kids are watching the caterpillars eat their “food” (tan gunk you see at the bottom of the container).
We made our own caterpillars out of egg cartons.  Cut a section of three egg carton cups.

Have the kids paint the egg carton.  After the kids are done painting, set it aside to dry.

Next we took a black pipe cleaner and cut it in half.  We then made two small holes at the top of the head of our egg carton, and stuck each end of the pipe cleaner through the bottom of the carton into the holes.  Then we curled the ends.
We also found some cute “eye” stickers to place onto our caterpillars.  Googly eyes will work great too.
In the photo below, you can see how four of our caterpillars are in their chrysalis.  However one caterpillar in the center is just beginning to form his chrysalis.
Next we took our caterpillars and had them form their own “chrysalis” by placing them inside a paper lunch sack.

My daughter has a tree mural painted in her room, so we twisted the ends of the bags and taped them to the leaves on the tree.

I then had my children choose the color of their construction paper and paints.  I placed them inside a plastic tub with some marbles.

Have the kids tilt the baking pan or plastic tub to move the marbles around in the paint. Here is another post that I did of the kids doing marble painting.

My daughter was really getting into it.  After the kids are done, set the paper aside to dry fully.

Here are the beautiful butterflies that we woke up to one morning.  They all hatched while we were sleeping.
While my kids weren’t watching, I cut out butterfly wings from their marble paintings.

I then hot glue gunned (it dries faster) the egg carton caterpillars to the construction paper.

I then taped them to my daughter’s mural for the kids to find.

Here are a couple more photos of our butterflies.  If you look carefully at this photo you can see the butterflies proboscis, which is a tube-like tongue, as he is drinking the sugar water we dropped onto the roses.

When we let our butterflies fly away, one landed on one of our plants, and I captured this photo.

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