This morning we were playing a game of Elefun, the game where fabric butterflies are blown from an elephant’s trunk for the children to catch in nets.

 I know, let’s go and catch butterflies outside.

My 4-year -old quickly ran outside to look around the garden for butterflies. I explained that we needed to be quiet and still if we were to find any butterflies.  Butterflies are attracted to red, yellow, pink and purple so we looked for flowers in these colours and waited.

The hunt for butterflies was not very successful so they started to look for other creatures instead.

I’m trying to catch butterflies. what else can I find to put in my net?

No butterflies in here.

These leaves are really soft. We’re not allowed to pick them but we are allowed to stroke them.

No butterflies but lots of bees

They found a woodlouse (or roly-poly as the kids here call them) and lots of bees but no butterflies.

I know let’s make some butterflies out of paper.

I cut out some paper butterflies. The girls wanted to decorate them with stickers but I could only find white ones.

I know let’s draw patterns on the white ones.  Now you hide them and we can find them and catch them in our nets.

We didn’t have any coloured stickers so the girls decorated white ones

The finished butterfly, without instruction my daughter decorated it with Symmetrical wings. ‘Butterflies never have 2 wings that are different’.

I hid them in the bushes. Found one! Now I have 1,2,3.4 butterflies, only 4 left to find.