Symmetrical Butterflies

For our last 1st grade project, I wanted to do butterflies (which matched up with what they were learning in class), but I ended up running out of time to do an Eric Carle style painted butterfly with texture, similar to this idea on Pinterest.  I had to drastically shorten this project in order to complete it before the end of the year, so I came up with this instead.

I have a variety of different shaped butterfly patterns so students picked which shape they wanted and traced it on white tag board.  They colored the body on the butterfly and then cut it out.

For the next step, we talked about symmetry on butterflies.  I passed out the mosaic stickers I have (used previously on a 6th grade Mexican Folk Art Mirrors) and had the students create a symmetrical design on the wings using the stickers.  All of this took one class period.

The second class, students had to use crayons to finish coloring their butterfly.  This was definitely a quick project but I'd say a majority of the students really understood about basic symmetry at the end!