It's Actually a Chrysalis

Ever since we received a copy of Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar for Christmas, I knew we absolutely had to do caterpillar and butterfly crafts ASAP.  Of course around here ASAP somtimes means 5 months... 

I do just love listening to the kids saying "cocoon" - it's the cutest thing ever.  They go like this, "Koo-KOON!" I make them say it over and over:  Koo-KOON!  Koo-KOON! (Yes, I know that technically butterflies form a chrysalis and moths form cocoons, but the book says cocoon so that's what we're going with for now.  And if you want to know like I did why the book uses incorrect vocabularization click here.)(And if at least one person finds the humor in the fact that I used a made-up word for a word that means um, words, then I can sleep in peace tonight.  Can you tell it's late?  Can you tell that the father of my children has been excessively busy lately, meaning I've been parenting solo waaaayy too much this week???)  <crickets chirping>  Sigh.

Back to the point....So on a dark, rainy morning we made caterpillars, cocoons, and butterflies.  The caterpillars are simply pom-poms glued onto cardboard, the cocoons are bent pipe cleaners wrapped in yarn, and the butterflies are coffee filters colored with markers and then painted over with water to make the colors run together. The kids did great with everything except the yarn-wrapping which is appparently beyond their skill level.  No one told me this so I found out the hard way.  Nevertheless we had a great time as long as I kept repeating, "It's the process that counts, it's the process that counts" while Daniel globbed exorbitant amounts of glue on top of the pom-poms after he'd already glued them to the cardboard and Mikea tried to color her coffee filter again after it was soaking wet.

So there you have it.  All in all they were pretty simple projects and now I have something to replace the shamrock decorations that have been hanging up since March.