Academics – Page 20 – Butterbees and Bumbleflies

Do-a-Dot Butterflies!

As you know from reading any of my posts here (or as you could probably gather from my blog title) butterflies are big around our house. Becca has been fascinated with butterflies from a young age, and we love to do butterfly activities. So yes, I realize that we are stuck in the dead of winter making butterflies… but what does it hurt to dream of spring a little – even if it is January? Plus, the awesome thing is, you can do this Do-a-Dot art and use it not for butterflies, but for your 2016 calendar!! Not sure what I’m talking about because you just happened to stumble across this post? Well, welcome! And check out the info on how to make your own fabulous 2016 calendar over here.

do a dot butterflies

Here’s what you’ll need:

coffee filters (whatever size you have on hand – we used the 4 cup ones)
clothespins (if you’re just doing the art, not making the butterfly craft, you don’t need these)
a squirt bottle with water
Do-A-Dot markers (We have this set:Do A Dot Art Marker Brilliant 6-pack aff link)
Activity trays (or a really good plastic table cloth would work too- but the markers DO bleed through the coffee filters – esp when they get wet)

First, you’ll make your dots, then as soon as you’ve made all your dots, spray the filter with water. Watch the marker spread!

To make the butterfly craft, simply pinch the filters in your clothespins, draw little faces, and hang your butterflies on some fishing line or attach to a photo frame, so they appear to be flying! We hung ours on our art display wall – they are just waiting to help hold up some fabulous art this year!

Crystal Snowflakes

Today’s STEAM topic: SCIENCE

Ok, so I’ll be perfectly honest with you that I got the idea to do these snowflakes from a post I saw on Facebook, but when I went back to try and find it, I can’t even begin to locate the source. (This is what Pinterest is for. Yes, I know that. But do I pin every wonderful idea I see on Facebook? No. I don’t have time for that. Shoot me now. HA!) Ok, so now that you’ve stuck around past my disclaimer, here’s a link to the post that I DID save from Playdough to Plato where she does an awesome thing of making letter crystals to spell the child’s name. That is so totally awesome, and I plan to do that with Becca later on this spring. But for now, we did snowflakes.

I just cut and twisted the pipe cleaners into snowflakes and then, we followed the directions on the Noirin’s post (linked above) to make our crystal snowflakes!! They turned out super awesome and Becca has really enjoyed looking at them over and over and touching them. Now I need to figure out what to do with them, because I don’t want to just throw them away…

Mini Habitat Boxes

Every Tuesday this month, I have shared with you some ideas for various animal habitat boxes. (Arctic/Antarctic – Farm – Dinosaurs – Ocean) But what if you don’t have abundant space to store all of these habitats? And what if you don’t have a million storage containers big enough for everything that I showed?

That’s where these MINI Habitat Boxes come in! Simply using a small Ziploc box, or even a washed out lunchmeat container (hello, recycling and FREE!), you can make a fun habitat box. Whether it’s a Serengeti refuge for just four safari animals, or a woodland retreat for five, these mini habitat boxes can provide just as much fun for your kids, while making it possible to have even more variety stored in a smaller amount of space! You could also create two different mini boxes from the same Toob of animals so that siblings could have their own habitat boxes to play in.

Shown in these boxes are a combination of animals from a variety of Toobs that haven’t already been placed into sensory boxes. I love it that we bought several Toobs and combined them all into one big bag so that when I want to make a box, I can just go and sift through and see what we have available. You can find the animals shown above in these Toobs (affiliate links – thank you for your purchases!):

Safari Ltd Pets TOOB

Safari Ltd Big Cats TOOB

Safari Ltd Wild TOOB

Nature Appreciation

Becca LOVES to be outside. And she loves watching birds. So this winter on a somewhat warmer day, I made a couple of bird feeders out of milk jugs and Becca helped fill them up with bird seed, and we hung them in a couple of our trees in the front yard. We’ve checked them and refilled them a couple of times, and she’s always so happy to see that the birds have been eating the food she puts out for them. These are super simple, basic feeders – just cut a rectangle in two sides of a paper milk carton, then cut slits a little further down, and fold down a little flap for the birds to sit on. Poke holes in the top for your string, fill them up, and you’re ready to tie them to the tree and go!

And along those lines of appreciating nature, I got these beautiful shots of some of our succulent plants this last week. They are just beautiful – ~~even~~ ESPECIALLY in the winter cold, which turns them various shades of red and pink. I love living in South Texas and learning how to use native plants in my flower beds!

Clothespin Painting

Last week you may have read about our calendar art. (If not, be sure to go back and read that post!) So today I’ve got the first of many Friday “Fun with Art” posts for you that will give you some fun ideas for making your own calendar art.

For this activity, you’ll need a few clothespins, some paint, some thick textured card stock paper (I like to use it for painting b/c it’ll stand up to the liquid better than regular paper), and some random textured materials.

I found a large pom pom, a paper rose, some tulle, some burlap cording, some ribbon, and some felt. Just scrunch those items into your clothespins, and you’re good to go! We used pink, white, and purple paint on dark red paper – perfect for using with our February collage for the calendar. Becca enjoyed seeing the differences in what happened when she would dab the paintbrush vs dragging it across the paper. We each ended up doing two whole sheets. I like to do art alongside her so that she’ll get different ideas about how to use the materials, but also so that she’ll see me enjoying art, which encourages her to want to do more.

Here’s our finished products!

Next week, I’ll be sharing the other type of art that we’re using for our February collage. Remember – I won’t be sharing the finished collages until after Christmas – and would love for you to share yours with me throughout the year for me to post as well – when we share ours at the end of the year. You can email me anytime at butterbeesandbumbleflies@gmail.com.

Don’t forget to click “like” on my Facebook page (link to the right) – when I hit 80 fans, I’ll be doing a giveaway!