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Glowing Firefly Craft

by Angela Thayer 3 Comments

We’ve been studying bugs and insects this summer and one creature my boys have been so interested in lately are fireflies! They really are fascinating insects and it’s been fun to see them outside glowing in the summer night.

Starting out, we read The Very Lonely Firefly, by Eric Carle. Although this is a fictional story, it still has facts about fireflies in the book. Plus it’s just a cute story to read!

The Very Lonely Firefly Craft After reading, we made a firefly craft to talk about the parts of a firefly. Here’s what you need for this craft:

  • empty water bottle
  • black and white pipe cleaners
  • black, red & brown construction paper
  • 1 glow stick
  • tape
  • glue

Firefly Craft Supplies To prepare the craft, you will need to cut construction paper for the eyes, legs, wings, and a red section (which is behind their head). You can see in the above picture how I cut them out. We made the antennae black and white (because that’s what they looked like in the pictures we saw). So I started twisting black and white pipe cleaner together and had my preschooler finish the twisting.

Once all your materials are ready for your child, then have them first tape the wings onto the water bottle. (We started out with just two wings, but learned later that they have 4 wings so we added two more wings underneath!)

wings Next, we taped on the legs (3 on each side). Then we placed the red strip of paper around the bottle (in front of the wings) and taped it to the bottle.

legs Then we glued on the black eyes. Fireflies have HUGE black eyes, which I never knew before! We also glued on the antennae (between the eyes). We decided to use a hot glue gun to make sure it would stay on.

Firefly Craft Lastly, we added the glow stick! I got a small glow stick, bent it in half and stuck it through the opening of the bottle. I shook the bottle until it reached the bottom.

glow stick And that was it! Then we had fun taking it in a dark room and watching it glow!

Glowing Firefly Craft

Glowing Firefly Craft

glowing firefly craft

The boys LOVED using their firefly for a nightlight that night. Of course it doesn’t last long, but you could always add more glow sticks to the bottle.

We also watched this Wild Kratts video on Fireflies (which you can see on YouTube here) and learned even more! Our last activity was going outside and looking for fireflies. We found a HUGE one on our bush in the daytime. It was fun to hear my boys notice that it looked similar to the craft we made! 🙂

If you are looking for a summer craft to keep your kids busy, you will have to try this one out!

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Filed Under: Crafts, Summer Activities Tagged With: bugs and insect theme

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  1. Julie says

    July 9, 2014 at 6:50 pm

    This is such a cute project. It reminded me of the fireflies we saw while camping. We are going on another camping trip soon and I went out and bought this book. There was even a surprise at the back and all the fireflies light and flash on the last page. Thanks, we now have a new book take camping with us!

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Firefly Crafts for Kids - Buggy and Buddy says:
    August 1, 2017 at 6:14 pm

    […] Glowing Firefly Craft from Teaching Mama […]

    Reply
  2. 15 Brilliant Bug (and Spider) Crafts for your Preschooler | Mother Natured says:
    January 18, 2015 at 10:29 pm

    […] Glowing Firefly Craft by Teaching Mama […]

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