Butterfly Letter Craft for Toddlers

Butterflies fluttering in the breeze, making loop the loops in midair is the ultimate image of springtime. As a continuation of our butterfly theme (Check out yesterday's DIY Butterfly Wings for Dress Up Play if you haven't yet) we made a fun easy butterfly themed letter craft.

I was rummaging through the craft supplies bin trying to think of fun, new, engaging activities to do with Little M. this week. One of the things I found were a gallon sized zip top bag full of various stamps that I was given second hand and a blue stamp pad. I picked through the various stamps and found a selection of different sized butterfly stamps. Perfect!

This craft is less about painting or gluing where an adult tells you to (because, let's face it, those crafts are for the adult, not the toddler) and more about banging a stamp as hard as you can into a piece of paper. (Fun!) This is the kind of activity every toddler in the world loves (noise and mess are well known toddler favorites-they especially fond of making this fact apparent to you in restaurants).

Before doing the activity, we discussed the letter B. We talked about its shape, the sound it makes, as well as some of the words that begin with the letter. Three of the words that we discussed were butterfly, blue, and brown. (Which we all happened to use in this craft, and that wasn't a coincidence!) 

To Make the Letter B Craft You Will Need:

• a piece of paper with the outline of an uppercase B either drawn or printed on it
• butterfly stamps
• an ink pad
• paint (optional)

Setting Up for the Butterfly Craft and Doing the Activity

Discuss the letter with the child. Hand them the stamps and allow them to explore them. Set out the ink pad and allow the child to experiment with the stamp and the ink. Little M. enjoyed stamping the paper. It was very interesting to her the different effects that were created by stamping various sides of the stamp into the ink and then pressing it onto the paper. It's so much fun watching a child learn, who has no presuppositions about anything. To a young child, there is no right or wrong way to use a stamp. Everything is judged strictly by the effect it produces, which is judged by the child.

When she tired of the ink, I asked her if she wanted to stamp in the paint next. That gave us the opportunity to use the larger stamps that wouldn't fit on the small ink pad. What a hit that was! This was a bit more interesting, because paint has thickness in addition to pigment. When the paint was thick on the stamp it left a delightful puddle on the page and when the paint was lighter it left a pretty butterfly.

Make It Your Own

This toddler activity is very adaptable. If you are doing a letter of the week program, you could swap out the B for whatever letter your child is learning about. Simply choose a stamp that represents an object that begins with that letter. Stamp apples on an A (You could even use real Apples, check out the Apple Stamping Activity for more info), cats on C, Dolphins on D, etc. You could also scrap the stamps altogether! Color the letter M with some markers or the letter C with some crayons. If your child is ready to learn lowercase letters, of course you could make a craft for those too!

If you found this activity useful, please share or comment. I'd love to hear from you!

You may also be interested in the Paper Plate Umbrella Craft or the Seed Painting Process Art Activity.