Add a touch of spring by making your own sandwich bag butterflies. You can use any kind of material that you can fit into the bag. Each one can be different and fabulously unique. Add glitter, tissue paper, fabric and paper scraps. Whatever makes you happy, just have fun making these adorable butterflies with your preschooler.

Make a sandwich bag butterfly

Materials you need:

• Sandwich bags – zipper closing works best
• Chenille stems (pipe cleaners)
• Fabric and paper scraps

How to make your own pretty sandwich bag butterfly:

1. Fill the sandwich bag with all kinds of tissue paper or fabric. Materials that let light in work best if you want your butterfly to “glow” in the sunlight.
2. Once you have the bag filled nicely, seal it. If you are using non zipper bags, use a piece of clear packing tape to make sure the bag is sealed shut.
3. Pinch the bag in the middle and wrap a pip cleaner around it. Twist the pipe cleaner and then separate the ends to make antennas.

Make a butterfly with paper scraps and a sandwich bag

You can add a piece of yarn or ribbon to your butterfly to hang it if you’d like. To add a little extra sparkle, add glitter inside the bag and use a glittery chenille stem. In this photo we used tulle in the bag, the fabric used to make princess tutus. Use bigger bags to make larger butterflies, just make sure to fill them enough to create a kind of puffy butterfly.

Have fun!

The next time you think of throwing away your empty cardboard tubes, think about saving them to make this super fun cardboard tube bowling game. You can decorate the tubes however you like. Encourage your preschooler to knock the “pins” down by rolling a small ball toward the tubes. Because they are cardboard, the pins will fall over pretty easily so your preschooler is sure to succeed. This is a great game to practice hand eye coordination, learning to roll a ball and determination (you have to knock down more pins than your opponent to win).

Make a mini bowling set with cardboard tubes and Duck tape

To make this bowling set, you need:

• Cardboard tubes – either toilet tissue rolls or paper towel rolls that you cut in half
• Patterned Duck Tape
• Twine
• Paper

Materials you need to make a cardboard tube bowling set

To make the bowling pins:

1. Wrap the cardboard tube with Duck Tape.
2. Wrap the center of the cardboard tube with twine to cover the cardboard gap – or cover with tape.

Wrap tube with Duck tape

Wrap other end with Duck Tape

Wrap center with twine

To make the bowling ball:

1. Scrunch up a piece of paper into a ball shape.
2. Wrap the paper with a piece of Duck tape.
3. Continue wrapping the paper with tape until you have a ball shape and are happy with how it has formed.

Make a paper ball and wrap with Duck tape

Create a round ball with the paper and Duck Tape

Play a fun game of bowling with your preschooler

When I made this cardboard tube bowling set, I also added a matching game element. Each “pin” had twine wrapped around the center. The color of the twine matches where the tube should be placed with the bowling pin layout. Three pins have orange twine, 2 have green twine and 2 has both. You and your preschooler can practice matching the twine colors too.

Who said bugs weren’t sweet and cute? This yummy ladybug snack is delicious, nutritious and oh so fun to make. This is also a great project to practice fine motor skills for some preschoolers. You can replace peanut butter with cream cheese, nutella or even honey butter if you prefer. (Note, apple cutting is for adults only.)

Ladybug Apple and Raisin Snack

Ingredients:

• 1 Apple
• Raisins
• 1 Red or Black grape
• Peanut Butter (or cheese cheese, etc.)

How to make the ladybug Apple and Raisin snacks

1. Cut the apple on on side as shown in photo. You can cut in half if you prefer, but I wanted to make sure the portions were a manageable size for little hands without cutting up the ladybug wings.
2. Cut out the core of the apple.
3. Spread peanut butter on one edge, between the two apple slices.
4. Use peanut butter to stick raisins on the apples to look like spots.
5. Make the ladybug head by cutting the grape in half and stick to the apples using peanut butter.

Cut the apple

Cut out core of apple slices

Put peanut butter on one edge of apple

Put apple slices together

Stick raisins on using peanut butter

Final apple and raisin ladybug snack

Idea inspired by this ladybug snack on Pinterest.

There’s all kinds of learning fun to be had with the alphabet. There are so many different games you can play, books you can read and activities. I think one of the best games is matching. You can play alphabet matching games just about anywhere and you can change it up to create different challenges to keep your preschooler interested. Practice letter recognition and sounds while you play to make it even more interesting. There’s a great free alphabet printable from Artsy Fartsy Mama featuring an alphabet match game and I think you’ll love it!

Alphabet Match Game from Artsy Fartsy Mama

The set comes with 1 uppercase and 1 lowercase version of each letter. Print out one set to match the uppercase with the lowercase, print out 2 sets to play a match game with exact letter matches. You can use this set to talk about different letters, make a match game, memory game or a simple Go Fish game. You can also use these letters to go along with an alphabet box.

Alphabet Match Game Free Printable from Artsy Fartsy Mama

Visit ArtsyFartsyMama.com to download your own copy of this free alphabet match game.

Go fish is a great game to play with preschoolers because it helps build skills for recognition, matching, along with taking turns and memory. This free Easter game download features the Easter bunny, decorated eggs, an Easter basket and other fun Easter themed symbols. Print out 2-4 sheets of these pictures and then cut out each image square to use as playing cards.

Download and print this free Easter Go Fish Game.

Here’s a super easy activity you can create using plastic Easter eggs and an empty egg carton. Your preschooler will have a great time playing with the eggs while practicing colors or matching similar eggs. All you need are a 12 plastic Easter eggs and an empty, clean egg carton. For a little extra fun, you can decorate the outside of the egg carton… that’s a whole other fun Easter themed project!

For our game I chose two egg sizes with a color match for each size. So there is a large and small egg in each of the 6 colors. This way my preschooler can sort by size or color or both.

To play, break all the eggs apart (if they are hinged, cut the hinge plastic piece off). Mix all the pieces and place in the open side of the egg carton.

Your child can then find the matching pieces, put the eggs back together and arrange in the egg holding side of the carton.

My preschooler likes to open all the big eggs and put the little matches inside. However you’d like to challenge your child, they can have loads of Easter themed fun! For more advanced play time, add a timer to see how fast your child can make the matches. If you have more than one child, make multiple egg sorting sets, they can then have sorting races or play in combination with each other.

It’s no secret, for better or for worse, that Easter means lots of chocolate eggs.  The Easter Egg Hunt is a long standing tradition in many households around the world, so why not turn it into an opportunity to help your preschoolers practice their colours.

Colour matching easter egg hunt

I found the cutest mini patterned tape rolls at Michael’s over the weekend and we decided to decorate our plastic Easter eggs with them. The tape comes in packs of 6 in a few different sets. So super cute! We mixed and matched the patterns and played with paper and other fun project ideas. You can use this tape to wrap plastic Easter eggs with your preschooler. Sometimes tape is difficult for little hands to cut, but lots of fun to stick. Think about cutting smaller pieces to place on the eggs as dots or even cover the Easter eggs completely. We found that some of our eggs were easier to decorate with the tape when we opened the egg. If you plan to fill the eggs with treats, make sure not to stick the tape over the seam.

Decorating plastic Easter eggs with tape

This tape is in mini dispensers and is a plastic tape – similar to standard transparent scotch tape. You can also try this with washi tape, however, washi tape tends to be less sticky, so might not adhere to the plastic eggs as well. You could also try masking tape that you draw on with Sharpie markers (preschoolers and permanent markers is tricky, be aware of accidental permanent marks on surfaces other than tape).

Mini decorative tape dispensers

Finished plastic egg decorating with fun tape

Open egg for easier tape decorating

I’d love to hear what fun you have with pretty tape and plastic Easter eggs!

Learn about circles and counting 3 and 4 while making this fun shamrock and clover garland. You preschooler can make their own shamrocks and clovers, decorate them how they’d like and then string them up to decorate the house with St. Patrick’s day fun. You can also talk about different shades of green or talk about light and dark colors with this project. We used a circle craft punch to make our circles for this project, but you could cut them out by hand too.

Shamrock and 4 Leaf Clover Garland

We decorated our shamrocks and 2 leaf clovers with buttons. If you don’t have buttons you can use a circle of paper in the middle, some painted glitter or anything else you’d like.

Materials you need to make a shamrock and 4 leaf clover garland:

• Green paper
• Scissors
• Glue
• String or yarn
• Buttons
• Tape or hole punch to attach yarn (optional)

How to make your own shamrock and 4 leaf clover garland:

1. Cut out circles of paper to use for the leaves of the shamrocks and clovers. Approximately 1-2″ diameter. Cut squares to use for background pieces, 2-3″ wide.
2. Use scraps of paper to cut small stem pieces.
3. Glue 3 circles together on a background piece for shamrocks and 4 circles together for 4 leaf clovers. Add a stem and glue in place.
4. Add any extra embellishments you’d like such as a button in the middle. Let dry.

To add string for garland there are a couple options:

1. tape yarn to back of each square.
2. use a piece of paper to glue yarn to each square.
3. punch holes in each square and string yarn through the holes.

Add circles to make shamrocks and 4 leaf clovers

Making shamrocks and 4 leaf clovers from paper circles

Add a green button for fun

Glue paper on the back of each square to hole garland string in place

Have fun making your own St. Patrick’s Day garland and decorating for the Irish fun. This project can also help teach the difference between shamrock and 4 leaf clovers while practicing cutting, gluing and counting. I’d love to see what fun you come up with!

Is there a difference between a shamrock and a clover? Some people don’t realize there is a difference, and for others there is even a debate as to which is which. So here is a free printable project page that can be used for games, counting activities and other fun projects. For this print out, shamrocks have 3 leaves and clovers have 4. Your preschooler can color each set, cut them out and use them as a sorting activity or even as embellishments for other fun St. Patrick’s day activities.
Download this free shamrocks and clovers printable

Browse more St. Patrick’s day crafts and activities.