Ecuador Butterfly Craft

We are continuing our journey through our Let's Go Geography curriculum. I wrote about my beginning experiences and opinions with this curriculum on my blog, A Learning Journey, about a month and a half ago. Ecuador's featured craft displayed the beauty of the butterfly. Ecuador is known for having many more different species of butterflies than any other location around the world. The curriculum provides an educational website link for children to research and explore butterfly pictures.

Let me tell you a little about this week's craft. First, we gathered the necessary supplies for the project including black construction paper, white cardstock, black pipe cleaner, scissors, glue stick, and acrylic paint.

I printed the butterfly template on white cardstock for my daughter from the Printables section of the curriculum lesson plans. Then, she folded the template on the fold line with the design face up. She also folded the black construction paper and placed it inside the folded butterfly template.

Next, Alyssa cut along the dark lines of the butterfly. She glued the white butterfly pattern on the black paper to give it a background.

In order to make a symmetrical butterfly, my daughter painted one side of the butterfly and then folded it so that it would paint the other side of the butterfly. Touch-ups were needed to fill in white spaces. She continued using this painting technique for most of the project except for the outside borders which were painted by hand.

The last step of this project was for her to fold the black pipe cleaner in half in order to create butterfly antennae. She placed the butterfly inside the folded pipe cleaner and twisted the top. Alyssa wrote "Ecuador" on the butterfly.

I will link my Ecuador Butterfly post up at Blogging Through the Alphabet Linky. E is the letter of the week so come join the fun and link up your post. I will also link this post up at the Virtual Refrigerator Linky and the Homeschool Blog Link Up.