Butterfly and Lion craft

 Earlier we pulled apart the red and blue japanese paper pompom - recycled from Ant's party decorations.  I cut out butterfly pattern on bond paper.  Ant carefully laid out the shredded japanese paper. I then sprayed it with water - she helped spray too.  Then closed it in the middle and sprayed some more water.  We let it dry in the sun.  Open and the pattern is on both sides!  We threw the japanese paper that transferred its color.  To assemble it into something Ant can use as a toy while reading the book Olmo and Blue Butterfly, I put it together with whatever scrap I have.

Tissue paper cartons are useful in any craft.

Glue it down with blue paper.

Ant watched as I did all these very quickly.  I know their attention span is short.  And I had to be fast enough so she wouldn't grab the materials from me. She played with other toys while I did this too.

A shriveled up yellow balloon can still have some life as a lion...

 While waiting for the blue paper to dry on the tissue roll, I folded brown and orange art paper in half, cut snips.

Woops! forgot to curl it up first. 

Then I decided to cut it in half.

Taped it around the yellow balloon...

Went back to finish up the butterfly.

Taped it to whatever stick I could find. 

 Glued the butterfly wings!  Ant loved swinging it around!

Wacky lion was more fun and had a shorter life span that way.  After one bicycle ride outside with wacky balloon lion, he went straight to the trash bin happily serving his purpose to entertain and educate!