If students have not been introduced to the books and art of Eric Carle, read The Very Hungry Caterpillar or watch the animated video on YouTube. We discussed how he made the illustrations and watched this video showing his process.

Children made painted paper with WARM colours. They painted their entire paper with one warm colour then add texture by scraping a texture comb through the wet paint, then used texture wands to dab or roll another warm colour over the paper.

We discussed SYMMETRY- mirror images- same on both sides and looked at some pictures of butterflies and noticed the symmetrical designs. We talked about SHAPES – organic: like a butterfly, a leaf, a flower etc, and geometric like squares and triangles.

Students folded their dry painted paper in half (colour inside) and draw half a butterfly- maybe a ‘B’ shape or chosen wing design next to the fold and cut out.

A long brown strip for body was glued in the middle. Shapes were cut and added for the head, eyes and antennae.

Cool coloured papers (scraps) were folded and used to cut out (two at a time) so shapes could be placed symmetrically on each side of the butterfly wings.