Thursday, April 15, 2010

Bodacious Butterfly Wings, a Fancy Nancy Craft


The girls were trying to make themselves butterfly wings with construction paper hearts, which naturally wasn't working out very well. I told them I thought they needed something a little bigger, and maybe shaped like two B's, back to back. Looking online for ideas, I noticed letter B wings suggested as an activity to go with Jane O'Connor's Fancy Nancy Bonjour Butterfly.

I checked the library catalogue, but they only had the book as an electronic resource, meaning we could download an audio version of the book, but not check out an actual copy. I didn't think that was ideal, as the charm of Fancy Nancy is in the fanciful illustrations of Robin Preiss Glasser, but it was better than nothing.

I downloaded the story, and to make up for the loss of illustrations, I printed out a corresponding coloring sheet from HarperCollins...


...which can also be colored online.


After, we finished coloring, and listening to the story, we set about to make some wings. I didn't have any large sheets of paper, so I ripped open a couple of grocery bags, and drew the back to back B's over their creases.


I cut them out for the girls, and they decorated them with markers, pompoms, and glitter. All I had on hand for glitter was one last, half dried up tube of glitter glue, but they made good use of it.


I poked two holes near the top, and two holes near the bottom of the wings.


And, I laced through some fuzzy yarn, to tie around the girls' arms.


The B shaped wings worked much better, than the smaller paper hearts. In fact, they were proclaimed - bodacious.



(Bodacious is a fancy word for really cool.)

It's great to be a homeschooler.

7 comments:

Natalie PlanetSmarty said...

Very pretty butterflies! We tried a couple of Fancy Nancy books, but Anna is not "getting" them - she is not in the least girly :)

Christianne @ Little Page Turners said...

Adorable! (But I must say if your girls don't have "real" fairy/butterfly wings yet, it's time to go out and buy some! They are a must-have for every young girls wardrobe. ;)

I can't believe they didn't have the book in the library! Fancy Nancy is an absolute favorite of ours. But then I have two of the girliest girls that ever were.

Unknown said...

The wings- and how you "improvised" with no book...I do believe you deserve a standing ovation!

Ariana Sullivan said...

I found your blog this year sometime and have been loving it. Thanks for the link to the coloring pages. My daughters are going to LOVE them.

And I have to add I love the "it's great to be a homeschooler" at the end of each post. It really IS great to be a homeschooler. Greatest thing ever :-)

Valerie @ Inner Child Fun said...

Bodacious indeed!!

((applause))

Ticia said...

So much quicker and easier than our butterflies....... Oh well, I like your project better I think.

Debbie said...

I love the way you took something the girls were trying on their own, and turned it into a full learning experience for them. Love the butterfly wings!