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Paper Bag Butterfly Craft For Kids [Free Template]

Looking for a fun and easy spring craft for kids?

This paper bag butterfly craft is great for little kids in preschool, kindergarten, and elementary school. It’s the newest addition to our butterfly crafts for kids.

And, like many of our other posts, we’ve included a free printable butterfly template to make it even easier on you to make with the kids!

There’s something kids just love about butterflies. It could be their bright colors, their large wings or something else entirely, but kids (and adults!) are mesmerized by them.

We’re showing you how to turn a plain ‘ol brown paper bag into a bright butterfly ready to take flight!

Read our directions or watch our quick video tutorial to see just how easy they are to make!

Butterfly Craft For Preschool

Butterfly paper bag puppet craft image collage with the words, “butterfly puppet craft” in the middle

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Supplies

Directions

Download the butterfly craft template, print out and cut out the pieces you’ll need.

Hands holding butterfly craft template

Take each of the butterfly’s eyes and glue them to the middle of the head piece. Use your .25″ circle punch, scissors or markers to make or draw on a small nose underneath the two eyes.

Hands gluing eyes onto yellow rectangle
Eyes gluing on nose to butterfly face

Place the pink cheeks on either side of the mouth and glue in place. Like the nose, if you don’t have a circle punch or you want to save steps, you can have kids color in the cheeks too!

Make the butterfly’s striped body by gluing on the light orange stripes onto the yellow body piece. Once they’re glued on, cut off the excess paper with the scissors. If you need to simplify this craft you can always skip this step or let the kids use markers to decorate instead of adding the paper.

Hands gluing dark yellow stripes to yellow rectangle

Glue the completed butterfly face onto the top flap of the brown paper bag.

Hands gluing butterfly face to paper bag

Place the striped body on the bottom part of the paper bag and glue in place.

Hands gluing butterfly body onto paper bag

Make the butterfly’s wings by gluing the paper accents on the inside of the wings. You can get extra fancy and glue on rhinestones, sequins, glitter or stickers too!

Hands gluing details onto paper bag butterfly wings

Take the completed butterfly wings and glue them to the inside of the paper bag. You can also glue it to the back of the paper bag, but we think the inside looks better when you’re using it as a puppet.

Hands gluing butterfly wings to paper bag craft

Take your pipe cleaner and cut it in half. Wrap one end of each pipe cleaner around a marker to make the butterfly’s antennae.

Hands twisting pink pipe cleaner around marker

Once you’ve made both antennae, flip the paper bag over and tape the antennae in place. If you don’t have tape or don’t want to use it, you can also use a glue stick. It’ll just take longer to dry and be ready for kids to use.

Hands taping pipe cleaner antennae to back of paper bag butterfly

Now your kids have a colorful and fun butterfly that’s perfect for spring!

two paper bag butterfly puppets

Make this easy kids’ craft for when you have a bug study unit or when learning all about butterflies!

If your kids enjoyed this craft, we’re betting they’ll also love this handprint butterfly craft.

blue winged butterfly puppet

Don’t forget to enter your email in the form at the end of this page to get your free printable template!

More Fun Insect Activities

Whenever we introduce a new theme or if we want to go deeper into it, we always start with children’s books! They’re an easy way to fill time and help kids learn to read or develop their vocabulary. Below are some of our favorite insect books for kids!

The Very Quiet Cricket– Everyone loves Eric Carle and this book is just as good as all his others! In it, a cricket is trying to discover how to make a sound, but when he rubs his legs together nothing happens. Follow him on his journey to find his very own sound! Kids love the ending where he and your child can hear the chirping!

Bugs A to Z is a great introductory insect book for kids. It’s great for kids to browse through and look at pictures and to find a short snippet about each bug.

Ten Little Ladybugs – This cute book is not only fun to read, but also fun to touch! Kids will want to read this book day after day and it helps them learn to count.

pink winged butterfly puppet craft

More Insect Ideas

Share With Us

Did you make this craft with your kids or students? We’d love to feature them on our social media!

For a chance to have your child’s craft featured, simply snap a picture of the completed project and post it to our Facebook page, email it to us directly by clicking here, or use #simpleeverydaymom on your social media!

More Ideas For Kids

two paper bag butterfly puppets

Paper Bag Butterfly Craft

Prep Time: 10 minutes
Active Time: 10 minutes
Total Time: 20 minutes
Difficulty: Easy

Learn how easy it is to make this colorful paper bag butterfly craft for spring!

Materials

  • Brown paper bag
  • Colored card stock or construction paper
  • White card stock
  • Colorful pipe cleaners
  • Glue stick
  • Tape (optional)
  • Markers (optional)
  • Butterfly craft template (download form located at the end of this page)

Tools

  • .25" circle punch (optional)
  • Scissors

Instructions

  1. Download the butterfly template, print and cut out the pieces.
  2. Glue the eyes onto the face piece.
  3. Use the circle punch to punch out a nose and two cheeks. Glue them on the face piece.
  4. Take the stripes and glue them onto the butterfly's body. Use scissors to trim off the excess paper.
  5. Glue the completed butterfly face to the flap part of the brown paper bag.
  6. Glue the body to the long portion of the paper bag.
  7. Decorate the wings with the accent paper and any other embellishments you'd like.
  8. Glue the completed wings to the inside of the paper bag, on each side.
  9. Cut the pipe cleaner in half and wrap one end around it to make the butterfly's antennae. Repeat for the other side.
  10. Flip the paper bag over and tape the antenna to the top of the butterfly's head.

Did you make this craft?

Please leave a comment on the blog or share a photo on Pinterest

Free Butterfly Body Template

Butterfly Template
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Michelle

Monday 17th of April 2023

I can't decide which is the best.

Sam

Tuesday 18th of April 2023

Haha, thank you ☺️

Ivette

Saturday 9th of April 2022

Esta padrisimas la actividad muy llamativa

Sam

Saturday 9th of April 2022

Thanks!

Elijah

Wednesday 9th of June 2021

i love this

Sam

Wednesday 9th of June 2021

Thank you!! Glad you like it!

Sue Seeley

Monday 20th of April 2020

Thanks for all the awesome post and freebies

Sam T

Monday 20th of April 2020

You're very welcome!

Marian

Friday 27th of March 2020

You make lovely things for children. I collect some of them to make it with our grandchild.

Eight years ago we had a creativity group for children. We did it for children in our village for over 12 years. I live in Holland!

Sam T

Friday 27th of March 2020

Wow, that sounds amazing! I'd love to have something like that in our area. Thanks so much for stopping by my site :)

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