We’ve been on a butterfly kick lately, and as a final cute project, we put together these coffee filter ones.

The toddler appeal here is that you need to use dot paints to decorate them – and you need to press down HARD. Travis didn’t need to be told twice – he loved pressing the paints and then lifting up to see if the color had bled through.

Once he’d made as many dots as he could ever wish to, I opened up the filters to show him that we now had… symmetrical butterflies!

When the paint dried, I twisted a pipe cleaner around the middle of each, twisting at the top to form two antennae. Tape the antennae to a small piece of plastic straw, and now your butterfly is ready to zip along!

We attached a string in our kitchen and living room for the butterflies to fly. As an alternative, thread your string from tree branch to tree branch in warm weather, or have two adults hold the ends of the string so the butterflies can zip back and forth as you raise or lower your arms.

One way or another, your toddler will be delighted.