Over the summer we had a lot of fun with some felt pieces cut into the shape of butterflies, exploring different shapes, patterns and so on. One theme that came up a lot was symmetry, a concept my eldest has a disproportionate amount of difficulty with and which was new to my youngest girl. By cutting out butterfly shapes and using the idea of cutting on a fold to get matching sides, we covered quite a lot of educational concepts. Then we cut out pairs of pieces of felt to decorate them and used buttons to embellish our efforts. It culminated in a summer butterfly picture but much fun was had along the way.

Here are just a few of what we designed. Although it was a simple activity it was a great deal of fun and the designs got more complex as the activity went on. We had intended to sew edges and embellishments to them and hang them as a mobile. It didn’t happen this year but I think we will do it, probably with a few other insects too.

Anyway, the purpose of this rather tardy post is to include the download of printable butterfly shapes I made. Each is a ‘half’ butterfly so you can cut them out on paper or fabric and work on symmetry yourself! 😉