Upcycled Preschool Crafts: Buzzing Bees & Beautiful Butterflies

Ever since our Lobster Handprint & Footprint craft, my girls have been begging to do arts and craft again.  Specifically – they want to paint.  And I want to keep them happy [read: busy], really I do, but I’m not a mom that has a book full of craft ideas in her head.  I’m just not that mom.  But as I was cleaning up the bathroom the other day and throwing all the empty toilet paper rolls that we seem to accumulate (why is it that people in my house can replace the roll but not throw out the empty cardboard?), it hit me – we could make something with these!  Earlier in the year, Hazeline’s class made necklaces with empty toilet paper rolls and shortly after that they made owls, so why not try to do something along those lines?  And then I remembered all that foam that I had left over from my Owl Hairclip project, which I thought would be perfect for wings.  I’ll admit, I was kind of “winging it” on this project (pardon the pun, I just couldn’t help myself), but I think they turned out pretty well and the girls really enjoyed themselves.To make this craft you will need:

Empty toilet paper rolls

Paint

Paint brushes

Googly eyes

Foam for wings (if you don’t have this construction paper should work too, it just won’t be as durable)

Hot glue (or you can use tacky glue if using construction paper)

Scissors

Pipe cleaners

Pom poms

Pencil

Black pen (preferably a felt tip) or black marker

Elmers Glue & Rhinestones (if desired to decorate)

Step 1 – Paint the toilet paper roll whatever color you’d like.  To make the bees, we covered the roll completely in yellow, waited for it to dry, and then painted on the black stripes (I did the last part since accuracy isn’t really the girls “thing” yet).  Step 2 – Draw a some wings on a piece of paper, then cut them out, trace them on to your foam, and cut them out of the foam.  I only drew one wing, then flipped it over and traced it the other way, so the wings would be exactly identical.  I did the tracing on this one, but Greenleigh was able to cut them out of the foam using safety scissors.  I tidied up the edges, but she did pretty well.  She also took it upon herself to decorate the wings using rhinestones that I had left over from another project along with some Elmer’s glue.Step 3 – Once traced and cut out, attach the wings to the back of the toilet paper roll leaving a little room in between them – that way, you’ll see them better and they won’t get hidden behind the toilet paper roll.  

Step 4 – Cut two pieces of pipe cleaner to 1 or 1.5 inch in length and glue a pom pom on the top of it to make the antenna.  Then glue the antenna to the inside of the toilet paper roll towards the top, using the wings to determine the middle.  You want some space between the antenna, but not too much.  Greenleigh and Hazeline were super excited to pick their colors, but I did the gluing on this one.

Step 5 – Glue the googly eyes on to the toilet paper roll using the wings and antenna as a guide, then draw a smile using the black pen.

Voila – A new insect friend!  And it looks like we’re going to have a lot of these since my girls are already begging to make more this coming weekend!