With some leftover coffee filters in our craft bin, Veronika was able to make two lovely crafts today, both of which felt just right for springtime!

The first was a riff on classic butterfly art. Big brother Travis recently made a version involving lots of fine motor skills… All well and good for big kids, but I kept this toddler version simpler. First, Veronika covered the white filters with dot markers. Dot dot dot!

Once they were mostly covered, I handed over a spritz bottle for her favorite part. Veronika loved spritzing and watching the colors run together. Make sure to saturate completely, then set aside to dry.

Meanwhile, we painted old-fashioned clothespins for the butterfly bodies. I thought purple and yellow would be nice springtime colors, but hadn’t bargained on her mixing them together. The color ended up a bit muddied, as a result, but they were still pretty. Set those aside to dry as well.

To assemble, carefully slide a coffee filter onto each clothespin, scrunching as you go, then fan out the wings. What a pretty flutter of butterflies!

The second project was a bit more involved: coffee filter flowers! This time, we started with spin art, an old favorite. Place one filter in the bottom of a salad spinner and dribble a little paint on with a plastic spoon. We used a mix of purple, pink, and red paints.

Close the lid and let the spinner spin! Veronika loved being charge of making the spinner go and then stop with the brake button.

Lift up for the lovely reveal! We repeated to make four flowers, then set these aside to dry.

To help mold them into the shape of flower petals, we used this neat trick from Hands on as We Grow: press each filter over an empty soda can, then spray with liquid starch. Although not an item I’d normally use for a craft, it worked quite nicely.

Let dry, then glue down onto a construction paper background. We painted craft sticks green for flower stems and added a few green button leaves and a pom pom in the center of each.

April showers brought May flowers!