Mission Sunday: Messenger Butterflies

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Esmé’s class at church has been reviewing the story of Naaman for several weeks now.  One of our crafts, a “secret-message” butterfly, turned out kind of cute!  The young maid was brave enough to share God’s message with a powerful captain, and this is a fun way for our kids to share messages from God.

Each butterfly had a “secret” message from God inserted into the body, and the kids were asked to deliver the butterfly to a friend during the week…

Materials used:

• Colorful “toilet paper” rolls (found at Michaels).
• Various colors of cardstock (with printer and scissors)
• Pipe cleaners for legs (optional – didn’t stick well with glue, so we used craft glue dots.  Hot glue gun may work better if available.)
• Plastic “gems” (optional, made project more fun for kids)
• White glue (poured into recycled plastic cups and dabbed onto project with q-tips)
• Colored markers (optional to write name, decorate)

Prep steps:

• Print hearts for wings on various colors of cardstock.  I used my computer’s “Snipping Tool” to copy the the DLTK printable butterfly wings B&W template – and then pasted them into Microsoft Word so I could fit a complete set of wings onto one cardstock page.
• Print butterfly faces on a sheet of cardstock.  Once again, I used my computer’s “Snipping Tool” to copy just the face of the butterfly from the DLTK printable butterfly B&W template, and then paste 12 times onto one sheet in Microsoft Word – to minimize wasted cardstock.
• Print messages from God on cardstock.  The free printable Love Notes at Mod Squad blog worked perfectly for this!
• Cut heart wings, faces, and messages.  There are a number of kids in the class who don’t have great scissors skills yet, so this makes things run more smoothly.  Get help if you can; it is a LOT of cutting.
• Cut pipe cleaners for legs if used – one pipe cleaner into 6 parts.
• Just before class, pour glue into plastic cups for use.  Also set out q-tips to use with glue, as well as markers to decorate butterfly and/or write name on craft.

Do the craft:

• Have children choose two large, two medium, and two small hearts in the colors of their choice.
• Pass out glue and have them glue their wings:  medium heart onto large heart; small heart onto medium heart.
• Pass out colored toilet paper roll; have them lay wings down flat, points together, and glue toilet paper roll onto the wings.  Let glue dry for a couple of minutes.
• Pass out butterfly faces (and gems if used); let them decorate however they choose (markers can be used to color in eyes, etc.) and glue faces onto toilet paper tube.
• Pass out pipe cleaner legs if used; white glue didn’t work well, so may need to use glue dots or hot glue.
• Pass out messages; read them, have children curl them and insert into toilet paper rolls.

Send them home to be messengers for God!

And for a little PSA, Kidology has three years of open source (“free”) children’s ministry curriculum available!  These studies can be used for grades 1-6.