21 Monarch Butterfly Crafts for Preschoolers

You'll need orange and black construction paper, pipe cleaners, googly eyes, and white paint to make these stunning paper roll monarch butterflies. You may need to pre-cut he shapes for your preschooler or at least draw an outline in pencil for the child to cut. When finished, they'll look beautiful on a bookshelf or table to add some color to your home for the summer.

This stick puppet butterfly has wings that really flutter! Children will love holding on to the popsicle sticks and flying their butterflies around in the air as they play. Color in the template, cut out the butterfly, paint the jumbo craft stick, and then apply the butterfly's wings to the back. The antennae are made with black pipe cleaners. Isn't this an easy monarch butterfly craft?

Our easy printable butterfly life cycle wheel is such a fun way to learn about the monarch butterfly life cycle. From eggs through larva, caterpillar, chrysalis, and adult butterfly, your preschooler will learn so much!

Introduce the concept of symmetry in nature and art with this simple art project. Create the outline for the butterfly in black glue, and let your preschooler color in the orange details using watercolor paints or oil pastels. It's beautiful, colorful, and a wonderful likeness of the actual butterflies.

Butterfly-loving kids will adore these DIY butterfly peg doll toys. The toys are great for imaginative play or will look fantastic on a shelf as decoration. Your preschooler can help paint the peg doll while you make and decorate the wings.

Look at how the bright colors pop against the black construction paper wings. These mosaic butterflies give preschoolers plenty of fine motor practice with their scissors clipping out the mosaic pieces. Decorate your spring bulletin board in the classroom with these beautiful mosaic butterflies.

Use felt to create a pair of costume monarch butterfly wings for your little one. They'll spend hours flapping their wings, arms spread wide, pretending to be a beautiful butterfly. It's a lovely DIY Halloween costume idea, too!

Here's another pretty craft that focuses on the symmetry of a butterfly's wings. Use paint to decorate one side, and then fold the wings in half to smoosh the paint on the other side. Voila—perfectly symmetrical wings!

Learn all about the life cycle of a butterfly with this craft made from printable pieces, cardboard, and a stick. You'll go through all the stages: eggs, monarch caterpillars, chrysalises, and butterflies, making it easy for your preschooler to understand metamorphosis.

This easy craft requires very little prep. In fact, all you'll need is a pencil, black construction paper, scissors, and white and orange paint. After you've traced the butterfly, let your child paint inside the wings with orange and near the edge of the wings with white dots. Preschoolers may need a little help cutting out the butterfly, particularly around the head and antennae.

It may not look exactly like a real monarch butterfly, but the kids will certainly have fun dyeing the coffee filters or watercolor paper with orange and black watercolor paint. Squeeze the dyed paper inside the clothespin, and add pipe cleaner antennae to finish them. Clip them to trees, curtains, or string them up to make a butterfly garland.

Part paper plate craft, part life cycles craft, this monarch butterfly project is as educational as it is fun. Place a large, colorful monarch butterfly on the paper plate half, and tie the steps of the life cycle to the plate by threading yarn through the punched holes. Hang it on a door or the wall to study the life cycle whenever you'd like.

Create a mobile out of sticks, yarn, and clothespin butterflies. Hang them outside on a dry, sunny day, and look at how beautiful they are as they flutter in the wind.

Use inexpensive party streamers and wooden pegs to make fluttery butterflies in a pinch. Let the kids color the pegs with markers (or leave them as is), and slide short pieces of orange, black, yellow, and white streamers down through the slit in the wood. Because there's no paint or glue involved, the kids don't have to allow for drying time before they can play with their butterflies.

Create a monarch butterfly outline with black glue, and fill it in with gorgeous orange, red, and yellow paint colors to look like the monarch butterfly. Don't forget to add color to the background, too! Paint it blue like the sky or any other color you can dream of.

Keep things simple with this printable monarch coloring page for children to color or paint and then cut out. If you have a printer, paper, and something to color or paint with, you're all set to get started within minutes!

Grab the free template to make these pretty paper butterflies. Because so many small cuts are involved, you may need to pre-cut the pieces for preschoolers, but they'll really enjoy gluing them all to the black construction paper wings using their glue sticks.

Focus on just the wing of the monarch butterfly with this painting activity using black oil pastel and watercolor paints in orange and yellow. The black oil pastel outline keeps the watercolors in place and prevents them from bleeding into each other or into the background.

Made with orange tissue paper, black construction paper, and some paint, these large monarch butterfly suncatchers will be a sight to behold in your windows! The black streaks in the wings are made using marbles and black paint, and kids will have so much fun rolling the marbles around to see what sort of pattern their marbles create.

If you're like most of us, you have a puzzle or two with missing pieces. Instead of throwing it out, use those pieces to make a fun craft like this puzzle piece monarch butterfly. You'll first paint the piece orange, outline it in black acrylic paint, and add some black and white details to the wings. The fuzzy butterfly body is a nice touch!

Download the template to print this beautiful butterfly on inkjet vellum paper. If you don't have vellum, regular paper will do... it's just not as thin as vellum. Use crayons or colored pencils to color in the details on the butterflies' wings before hanging your suncatchers in the windows.

What could be prettier or more practical than a lovely monarch butterfly bookmark to save your place in the books you're reading? The basic corner bookmark is easy for preschoolers to fold. Then, only a few snips are needed to make the basic butterfly shape.

Younger children may need help cutting out the colorful decorative pieces for the wings. However, the step-by-step video from Red Ted Art is very helpful for kids and parents alike to make these bookmarks in no time.