Tag: Birds

Handprint Bird

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Your child’s hand can magically turn into a baby bird’s body and wings with the help of a little paint!

Travis’s favorite part of this craft by far was smooshing his whole hand in a plate full of white paint, and pressing it onto the paper.

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So that our craft would stay precise, I provided him with extra paper where he could make hand prints to his heart’s delight until the white paint was gone.

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We returned to the craft itself once the paint was dry, and now it was time for glue! Have your child help you rip up a brown paper bag into pieces, and then glue in an overlapping pattern to form the bird’s nest.

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You can then add a googly eye and triangular beak (which I cut from orange construction paper) to finish your bird. Because white-on-orange wasn’t the best color choice, I outlined our bird in order for Travis to see it better.

The handprint makes this particular craft keepsake worthy – you’ll marvel some day at those tiny fingers and thumb! It might make a beautiful gift to send to grandparents or other family members!

Bird Crate

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Although the crafts were cute, I confess that Travis and I weren’t as interested in this month’s Koala Crate with a bird theme – mainly because he does not like dressing up in costume, and two of the projects involved items for your child to wear.

The most fun by far was sculpting a little clay bird. As always, you could put together these crafts with supplies from a craft store, but we used the blue clay provided by Koala to shape a little bird body, head, and wings. Travis loved rolling the clay, even though I neatened things up a bit to make the final product like avian.

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His favorite part was sticking in a few tail feathers! We had to wait overnight for the bird to dry, but then it was fun to fly around. Leave some extra clay for little “eggs” to put in a nest.

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The next project involved looping fabric feathers over buttons on a piece of blue fabric, to make wings. The buttons are great practice for little fingers, so even though Travis needed my help, I consider it a fine motor success.

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He only tried on the wings once, but wasn’t a fan of the elastic loops over wrists and shoulders…

 

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…so we made it more of a wrap, which he enjoyed briefly.

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The mask was almost entirely done by me, after Travis attached feathers to a sticky strip along the top of the felt mask.

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It very cutely came with interchangeable beaks – a kiwi, a duck, and a cardinal – attachable by velcro, so your child can learn about different birds. Since Travis didn’t want to wear the mask, Teddy was our model!

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Discomfort in the costume aside, Travis had fun with the materials, and loved pretending to be a bird once the crafts were assembled, including “soaring” like an eagle, “pecking” like a woodpecker, and other fun variations.

We tried out one final craft suggestion, of a “hatching” baby chick on a clothespin. Draw two halves of an egg and a baby bird’s head on paper, and have your child color them in.

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Cut out (either adults, or preschoolers with safety scissors) and attach the chick to the back of a clothespin and the egg halves to the front. Then pinch the clothespin open and closed to watch your chick “hatch”!

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