Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Ladybugs and Caterpillars Take Over Our House

We have had an invasion of ladybugs and caterpillars over the last couple of days!  They are just appearing out of nowhere!!!

My son, who my youngest has dubbed Boy, receives Your Big Backyard Magazine every month (totally awesome magazine, as is Ranger Rick).  This month, they featured a ladybug craft.  Boy, being so utterly fond of a good craft asked (read insisted) on going to the craft store to get the necessary materials.
Now having all the materials, we sat down to make them.  After fussing with several puffy balls and glue and goggly eyes and more puffy balls, I remembered why I never made crafts with them.  Nothing every sticks to them in the right way with normal glue your kids can use.  And they don't have the patience (neither do I) to hold them until they are near dry.

Being the quick thinker that I am (ha!), I replaced the glue with thread and taught Boy, who is 6, how to thread a needle and sew the ladybugs together.  This whole time my oldest daughter, Munch (10), was busy making about 85 ladybugs all on her own - the nice thing about a 10 year old.  And my youngest daughter Sweetpea (2) was lining puffy balls up in cool rows - wonder where she gets that!  Sitting there staring at the incredibly cool rows she was making gave me the idea for an alternate craft - caterpillars!  They would be so much easier to string on a thread, and they would be so very cute to boot.

We strung them up.
And made little antennae.  Before putting the head on, we sewed the antennae onto the last ball, by wrapping the thread around the pipe cleaner in 3 or 4 places like so:

Then came the head.  And of course, the googly eyes.

Just too cute!

They multiplied like bunnies.

And took over our dining room alongside the sheep made earlier using this really cool tutorial from The Inadvertent Farmer - check her out, she has Great ideas!!

All underneath our flying bees, made using this tutorial, again from The Inadvertent Farmer.  Check her out, she's really cool.

After 2 days, the craft stuff is still out, and the bugs are multiplying like crazy!  We will be completely overrun very soon. 

1 comment:

Ann said...

What a cute craft. And learning sewing to boot!