Picture Books and Crafts: Backyard Bugs & Fingerprint Bugs

I started a series last year called "Preschool Picture Books and Art", but I wanted to start it back up again. I renamed it Picture Books and Crafts since Zeke is no longer in preschool, and our projects are more crafty than artsy. 

We started this cold, rainy weekend with a book from one of our favorite series, "Hello World!" 

Backyard Bugs is a fun board book with simple text and more details for older kids who want them. We read through the book and then went through page by page and made a page full of fingerprint insects!

Zeke did this entire project by himself! I did have a sheet where I would demonstrate what to do, and then he did it on his own. Here is a close-up and description of each bug that we created.

Worm - Zeke used his entire finger for a worm-print. He used yellow ink like in the book and added orange stripes with a marker. We didn't add any eyes since there were none in the book.

Caterpillar - Again Zeke used an entire finger print with yellow ink. He added feet, antenna, and stripes.

Butterfly - Zeke used four orange finger prints for wings, and then added antennae and decorated the wings with a black marker.

Ant - Zeke used brown ink and three finger prints. Then he drew six legs, two antenna, and two eyes.

Ladybug - Zeke made a red thumbprint and then added black dots, antenna, and six legs. 

Cricket - Zeke used brown ink and added legs and antenna.

Grasshopper - Zeke used green ink and made a long body. Then he used a black marker to make legs and antenna.

Spider - Zeke used brown ink for the spider's body and then added eight legs and a mouth.

Dragonfly - Zeke used two pink finger prints and then added four wings with a black marker.

Bumble Bee - Zeke used a yellow finger print, then he drew black stripes, wings, and a head.

This was such a fun little project, and Zeke thought his fingerprint bugs turned out so cute! You could do this with any book on bugs, but the cartoon illustrations made it easier for Zeke to visualize how his bugs should look. 

Have you done this before? Click the image below to see our other projects!