Our homeschool group is using free butterfly templates for a fun art display at our library. The links to the templates are included in this post. Read on if you’d like to know what Green Mountain Area Homeschoolers is doing with these butterflies. Otherwise, you’re welcome to skip down for links to the free downloads of the butterfly PDFs.
Homeschool Group Art:
Over the past six or seven summers (I’ve lost track), I’ve hosted an Annual Summer Art Day in August for our group. We get together in my backyard, create about four different art projects over the course of two hours, and then display them at our local library. That makes it sound pretty simple. 🙂 As with some of my similar efforts, it started out as a ginormously overwhelming project… which I ended up loving. Hence, the annual tradition.
Annual Summer Art Day gives our students to create a variety of artwork around a theme and then share it in a public venue. I’ve tried to make it so that even students who don’t feel like they are ‘artistic’ can make some pretty amazing creations.
Over time, I’ve learned how to make Art Day run smoother. It’s evolved into a very doable process that I look forward to and enjoy from start to finish. I’ll do another post at some point and share that process.
Our 2020 Homeschool Art Display:
Our library is planning to re-open soon and has asked if our homeschool group can create an art display. They weren’t able to give me a lot of notice. Like everyone else, they’ve been trying to figure things out as we go along. Of course, I said yes… and then sat down to figure out how we can actually do this with about two weeks notice. With Covid-19, hosting 30 students and their parents in my backyard is out.
The theme was easy this year. Our group is doing a student-led service learning project, The Pretty Big Pollinator Project, to promote pollinator awareness and conservation.
I decided to try for three pieces of artwork from students this year for our library display. Two are guided and one is student choice. The guided ones are designed to give our display some cohesiveness, while the student choice artwork allows for more individual expression.
My primary concern was making the guided projects easily accessible. I wanted to use materials that most people already have, make it do-able and interesting for all ages, and allow for individual creativity. Here’s the first project (and the free butterfly template PDFs).
Project One: Butterflies
Materials –
- 8.5 x 11 piece of white paper (preferably card stock or heavier)
- Access to a printer
- Scissors
- Any of the following – crayon, marker, colored pencils, fabric, glue, glitter, etc.
Free PDF Printables:
Simple Butterfly This looks the easiest to cut out for small hands. (Scroll down to first template on the web page.)
Big Butterfly Cutout I think this one’s a Swallowtail Butterfly. (Scroll down to ‘Big Butterfly’ and then click on the text beneath that reads ‘Large Butterfly’.)
Monarch Butterfly Cutout (Scroll down to ‘Butterfly Template’ and then click on the text below that reads ‘Monarch Butterfly’.)
Instructions:
These printables are all fairly good-sized but if you want to fill your 8.5 x 11 piece of paper, set it up to print on landscape and enlarge the butterfly slightly if you can.
Print your butterfly on card stock or plain copy paper and then cut it out. If you use plain copy paper, you might want to trace that onto something heavier (like a cereal box) and then cut that out. Paint, color, or decorate however you want. I would also suggest cutting off the antennae and gluing something else on.
Green Mountain Area Homeschoolers: Have your students put their names on the back of their butterflies and drop them off in the bin outside my house.
More Art Projects Coming Soon:
I’ll share the second and third project instructions soon. In the meantime, enjoy your butterflies! Whether or not you’re participating in the Green Mountain Area Homeschool group display, click on the comments section below and share a photo – I’d love to see what you create!
The Monarch artwork at the top of this post is a student blog submission from Keara for The Pretty Big Pollinator Project.