Coffee Filter Butterflies

Materials Needed:

• White round coffee filter
• Watercolor paints
• Clothes pin
• Markers
• Small googley eyes
• Pipe cleaner
• Yarn
  
• Glue gun
  

Procedure:

1. Flatten coffee filter so that the child can paint it. Encourage him/her to paint the entire filter. The less white the better. If you're like me, you might have to "let go" of the urge to paint all the white parts that the kiddos did not cover. =)
2. When child is finished painting, set the filter aside to dry.
3. While the filter is drying, have the child use markers, or more paint, to color the clothespin.
4. Glue googley eyes on to one end of the clothespin. Make sure that the part of the clothespin that clasps is up...that's the end you'll glue the eyes on to.
5. Form the pipe cleaner into the shape of antennae. Glue this on to the butterfly's "head".
6. Once the coffee filter is dry, pinch the top and bottom together and use the clothespin to hold it there. "Fan" out the sides until they look like the wings you want them to be.
7. Optional: Glue yarn to the back of the clothespin to hang it up.

Rainbows

Here are 2 rainbow projects we did, and both kids enjoyed them very much!

1. Paper Squares Rainbow

Supplies Needed:

• White poster board
• Construction paper
• Cotton balls
• White card stock
• Scissors
• Glue

Prep Work:

• Cut rainbow shape out of poster board.
• Cut 2-inch (or so) squares out of colored construction paper.
• Cut 2 cloud shapes out of white card stock.

Procedure:

1. Have the kids glue on the squares. Depending on the age/development of the kids, you can either have them put the glue on, or you can do the glue and then have them place the paper squares on the glue.
2. Have kids glue cotton balls to the pre-cut clouds.
3. Glue clouds on to each end of the rainbow.
4. Label each color arc with the name of the color.

Important things the kids can learn:

• Facts about rainbows (you can talk about the color order, how a rainbow is formed, etc.)
• Spiritual significance of a rainbow (Genesis 9:12-17)
• Color identification
• Color word recognition

2. Noah's Ark

Supplies Needed:

• Paper plate
• Brown construction paper cut into a half circle, the same size as half of the paper plate you are using
• Paint and paintbrushes
• Stickers
• Glue

Procedure:

1. Have the child paint a rainbow in the top half of the paper plate. If you have a little one,
like I do, the rainbow might look more like this, and that's okay.=):

2. Glue the brown "ark" on the bottom half of the plate.
3. Have kids pick out animal stickers to put on the ark. Caleb was a bit concerned that there
was no Noah, so you could always add him as well (a sticker or an image printed off of the
computer). If possible, include 2 of each animal, to stress that important part of the story!

Important things the kids can learn:

• Story of Noah and the Ark (Genesis 6-9)
• Color identification
• Order of colors in a rainbow

I got the idea for the Noah's Ark craft from here. I modified it to what would work for my kids (ie: stickers instead of animals printed off the computer that needed to be colored), as well as to what materials we had (ie: no brown paint, so we used construction paper).