Lily’s Insect Project

That's right, our 21 month old daughter had a project to do. After my initial surprise and personal debate on whether or not we really needed to do this, I thought we could just throw together a pipe cleaner spider and call it done. Afterall, Jacob, our 10 year old had a project to complete this weekend as well and that was for a grade! Then I overheard my husband telling the teachers I was the crafty one and he was sure I'd come up with something. Great, now the pressure is on!

After a brief internet search, I was excited to find these cute fireflies on Apartment Therapy. I had most of the supplies on hand so it was a done deal!

The project called for an egg, pipe cleaners, an LED light, avery labels, duct tape and a thumbtack.

Lowes did not have LED lights so my problem solving husband found a makeshift solution. We just removed the LED from an inexpensive LED candle. Our plan was to make two but we gave up after the first one.

Steps:

I folded a piece of duct tape over on itself, leaving about a quarter inch overhanging. This is so I could tape it to the egg but it wouldn't stick to everything else. Then I cut out a shape that looked like the image above.

1. Use a thumbtack to poke holes in the egg. We found the thumbtack didn't create a big enough hole so my husband used needle nose pliers to enlarge the hole a little. He poked 3 holes on each side of the longer part of the plastic egg – the pointer side. (One reader recommended using a small drill bit and another used a needle.)
2. Thread the pipe cleaner through the holes.
3. Repeat the same process to add two antennas.
4. I used a marker (and the avery labels) to create the eyes and draw the mouth but googly eyes work too!
5. Cut and add wings using duct tape. Unfortunately, I didn't get a good photo of the wings before turning in the project. They looked something like this.
6. Insert the LED light and close the egg. You don't want to seal the egg closed because you want to open it up and turn it on and off.
7. You may need to adjust the legs to make sure the "bug" can support himself.

We had the best intentions to have Lily participate in this project but she was more interested in bouncing on Rody while her daddy did all the work! Jacob, who was supposed to be correcting his homework, was critiquing the effort.

(I couldn't get Lily to stop bouncing long enough to take a good picture.)

Now you just need to light it up!!

How cute is this guy?!?

Do you find yourself doing your kids projects? I guess you can call this a family effort. While Lily didn't participate much in putting this firefly together she enjoyed playing with the result!

Linking to: Tatertots and Jello and The Frugal Girls