Easy Dragon Fly Craft for Kids
With this dragonfly craft, kids can turn ordinary Starbucks stir sticks into delicate, glittered butterflies to hang in a window or to make a mobile with.
We were all about the nature crafts today. See the flowered tiara on Miss 4’s head? That was one of the things we made. We also made these easy stir stick dragonflies.
You could make these with regular popsicle sticks of course, but Starbucks stir sticks are perfect because they’re so long and thin.
I always grab a few extras when I’m at Starbucks and I tuck them into the craft cupboard when I get home. They’re great for mixing paint, applying glue and for crafting with.
Today, Miss 4 came across a jar of them in the craft room and asked if she could paint some. While she was painting, we thought about what we might make with them.
We played around with the painted stir sticks, laying them this way and that, and we came up with these simple dragonflies.
One vertical stir stick serves as the dragonfly’s body, and two criss-crossed stir sticks serve as our dragonfly’s wings.
They’re really cute, don’t you think?
I think our dragonflies would look great suspended in a window or strung into a mobile to hang in a bedroom.
To make this easy dragonfly craft, you’ll need:
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Instructions:
We began by painting our stir sticks, using several different colours of acrylic craft paint.
To dry them quickly, I gave them a blast with the hairdryer (one of my favourite tricks when I’m crafting with kids).
Next, we assembled our dragonflies, securing the stir sticks in place with a glue gun. You can use regular white glue to stick your dragonflies together, but I felt that they’d hold better with hot glue. We used a low heat glue gun so she could do that step herself.
You can read more about kids and glue guns here if you’re interested in introducing glue guns to your kids or students.
Then, we brushed a layer of white glue onto our dragonflies’ bodies and wings, and sprinkled them generously with fine glitter.
Don’t you just love how glitter makes everything prettier? As you may know, I used to be a total glitterphobe but I’ve really come a long way. Glitter cleans up easily with a damp cloth and the dust-buster, and I’m finding that little bit of mess is worth it for the sparkle and shimmer that we get in return.
I know.
You’re thinking I’ve lost my mind, aren’t you. Haha!
Life is short. Embrace the glitter.
The next photo is a bit dark because I wanted it to capture the shimmer of the glitter.
We finished by gluing a couple of googly eyes onto each dragonfly.
Miss 4 enjoyed flying her dragonflies around the backyard.
With some fine thread, you could easily turn these dragonflies into a mobile to hang in your child’s room. I would probably use a couple of sticks from the yard to make the mobile – similar to how we made our pinecone mobiles last month.
And if you’re wondering about the flowered tiara that Miss 4 is wearing, we made that earlier in the day. It took just a few minutes and she wore it all day long. She said it made her feel like a fairy-princess. You’ll find the instructions to our flowered tiara here.
A flowered tiara, and some glittery dragonfly friends. It doesn’t get much better than that when you’re 4.
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Jackie is a mom, wife, home daycare provider, and the creative spirit behind Happy Hooligans. She specializes in kids’ crafts and activities, easy recipes, and parenting. She began blogging in 2011, and today, Happy Hooligans inspires more than 2 million parents, caregivers and Early Years Professionals all over the globe.
