These tissue paper clothespin butterflies are easy to make and they’ll provide your toddler with lots of fine motor development, sensory fun and an all-time favourite activity – stamping!
Butterflies are one of our favourite things to make at craft time here in my daycare in spring time. (You can find all of our butterfly crafts here.)
Fine motor and sensory fun
These tissue paper and clothespin butterflies are perfect for toddlers and preschoolers. The clothespins help to strengthen pincer grip, and young kids love the sound and feel of tissue paper as they craft with it.
Hang them individually or make a mobile
You can hang these butterflies from the ceiling or string them into a mobile like we did with our coffee filter monarch butterflies, or even turn them into a fridge magnet like we did here.
Gather your Supplies
To make our tissue paper clothespin butterflies, you’ll need:
- Several sheets of tissue paper
- clothespin
- paint
- googly eyes
- pipe cleaner (optional)
- cork for stamping (optional)
Clothespins are great for fine motor development
Before we started, the hooligans played around with the clothespins.
I love using wooden clothespins for fine-motor development so I always keep a basket of them on our deck for the kids to play with.
The toddlers are happy to simply pin them to the edge of the basket while the older children love to clip face-cloths and their sun-hats on the small clothesline I’ve set up for them beside the playhouse.
Opening and closing the pegs requires strength and co-ordination, and helps children develop their pincer grip which helps prepare them for holding a pencil properly when they begin printing.
How to Make a Tissue Paper Clothespin Butterfly
- First, paint your clothespins
Each hooligan painted their clothespin in the colour of their choice, covering all sides and surfaces of the peg.
- Add the tissue paper wings
When they were dry, we added our tissue paper wings. I cut the tissue paper into 12 x 8 (approx) rectangles. You can go smaller than that, and you’ll get a smaller butterfly, but don’t go much larger, or there will be too much bulk for the clothespin to hold.
For the wings, gather your tissue paper up by cinching it in the middle. You can use 2 or three sheets of the same colour, or you can go with a few different colours.
Now clamp your clothespin around the cinched part of the tissue paper, and fluff the wings up a bit.
- Decorate your butterfly
The hooligans glued googly eyes to their clothespin butterfly bodies. Then to decorate the wings, they dipped wine corks into paint, and stamped the tissue paper with them.
- Add an Antenna
To make an antenna for your butterfly, fold a pipe-cleaner in half and curl each end around your finger, We attached it to the butterfly by pinching the folded “V” end of the pipe-cleaner into the clothespin to attach it to the butterfly.
Wouldn’t these look cute hanging in a window or in a child’s room?
More Spring Crafts for Tots
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Jackie is a mom, wife, home daycare provider, and the creative spirit behind Happy Hooligans. She specializes in kids’ crafts and activities, easy recipes, and parenting. She began blogging in 2011, and today, Happy Hooligans inspires more than 2 million parents, caregivers and Early Years Professionals all over the globe.
