Tall Tales in Art- Velma Gratch and the Way Cool Butterfly

 For the third week of our summer program, I read the children the book velma gratch & the way cool butterfly by Alan Madison.
Velma is a first grader, with two older sisters. Everyone at her school remembers her sisters, but no one ever remembers Velma. She tries different ways to get herself noticed by her teachers. She finally finds something that her sisters never learned about- BUTTERFLIES! Her class takes a trip to the butterfly conservatory. Velma has a monarch butterfly land on her finger and it won't leave! No one will ever forget this!

If you have never read this book, I highly recommend it! We tied in a little science before we got started on our art projects and what child (and adult) doesn't

love butterflies? There is great vocabulary in the book and the children loved the way Velma went about learning the new words.

The 2-5 year olds then did a painting project with their caregivers. They folded a piece of paper in half and cut out 1/2 of a butterfly.

They opened the paper and painted on only one side.

We made sure to put out fluorescent colors for this

 project.

This project worked out well for the little ones. Aside from being a little messy, they just had to cover the paper with paint.

When they finished, they re-folded their paper and rubbed it really well to transfer the paint to the other half of the page.

When they opened them up, it was priceless to see little eyes get huge! It was like magic had taken place on their paper!
I had a few blow dryers handy for the volunteers to help the kids dry their paint (usually I would put them on a drying rack, but this program is only and hour and a half, no time for allowing paint to dry!).

Once the paint was fairly dry, they glued the butterfly shape onto a piece of construction paper and then started adding details: legs, eyes, antenna, etc.

I had pipe cleaners, construction paper, scissors, glue all handy for them to use.

 The results were absolutely gorgeous! The fluorescent colors really added to the overall effect of the project.

 The 6 and 7 year olds made butterfly molas.

They started out by cutting a butterfly shape (the same way the younger group did) and gluing it onto a piece of construction paper.

Then I had pre-cut pieces of construction paper into 3" x 4" pieces and the student were shown how to cut circle, triangle, ovals, etc.

They learned how to cut multiples of one shape by folding their paper or placing 2 or 3 pieces together.

 As they cut their pieces, they used school glue to glue the pieces onto their butterfly.

The 8 and up group made mosaics. They also cut out a butterfly shape and glued it onto another piece of paper.

I had bought bags of mosaic paper and the students used these to glue onto their buttefly. They used scissors to cut the pieces if they were too big or if they needed triangles.

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