ofamily learning together

It is no secret that my daughter loves the 3D butterflies from Twinkl (part of the platinum package).  She has used them in a number of different craft projects in the past so it was no big surprise when she asked if I could print some more for her.  She has going through a bit of a times table craze and she wanted to use the butterflies to practice her 2x  table (why had I not thought of this idea ??)

She actually knows her 2x table so she quickly got bored with doing this and then asked if we could double up her butterflies so that each butterfly now had 4 wings.  This was the first time she had tried the 4x table.

My daughter is a visual learner so introducing a concept like this with visual aids really helps her understand it (she also likes to be able to touch items in her hand as opposed to just reading or looking at a picture).

We had so much fun with these butterflies that I recently asked Twinkl if they would consider making us some dragonflies, they did and we love them (Link for 3D dragonflies).  My daughter quickly realised that when you double up the dragonflies they have 8 wings so we ended up making some cute skip counting sticks.  We used the doubled up butterflies for counting in 4’s and the doubled up dragonflies for counting in 8’s.

The great thing about having all these butterflies and dragonflies lying around (I am not the best at packing away our goodies at night – I often just collapse onto the couch and leave everything scattered), is they are great for inspiring crafting.

My daughter used the butterflies and the dragonflies to make some thank you cards for her ballet teachers.  Her ballet teachers loved the cards.  I think these would also be great for some birthday cards.

We also combined the 3D dragonflies with some tissue paper to make a cute collage.  We started off by sticking down the tissue paper to make a simple background.  My daughter finds it easier to add the glue to the paper and then add the tissue paper.  If she adds the glue directly to the tissue paper she often just ends up with crumpled balls of tissue paper.

And then my daughter added her dragonflies.

Very simple and a lot of fun to make.

Just to comment about the 3D templates that we have been using from Twinkl.  My daughter is fine cutting the butterflies out (she does do it slowly but she tries to cut it perfectly), my youngest also sort of manages to cut them out.  The 3D dragonflies are a bit trickier, my youngest could not manage these, my daughter can but she does simplify her cutting.  So she does not cut out the antenna that are included on the template she just cuts out the basic face shape.  We are not fussed by this.  Both my daughter and I think that the dragonflies still look stunning.