Paper Bird

Resources
Disposable plate, glue, crayons, paper, cardboard, scissors, crepe paper.

Method: Paper plate was coloured. The children drew the outline of their hands on a paper and coloured it in. The head was then drawn. The paper plate was cut in the middle and the edges were glued together The hands were attached to form a tail. The head was glued on last. This was then left to dry.

The children really enjoyed doing this craft. When they realised that the bird’s purpose was to serve as a container they all started using more and more colours on their birds.

They were left to draw the head as they liked, without emphasizing that this should be a bird. As such, some birds had really weird shaped heads. But this only helped to encourage the children to express themselves. Some even did more than two hand prints to stick as the tail and coloured all hands differently.

During the craft it was fairly easy to control the children, and the craft itself was quite simple to explain. Once they saw the one we had prepared and what the volunteers were doing next to them, they had almost no problems. The volunteers had to help some children with tracing the outline of their hands, and others while they were using the scissors.

Improvements:

1. Using a paper (cardboard) plate. It would have been easier to colour, cut and stick together.

2. Do some kind of feet for the bird to help it stay upright.

3. Use hard cardboard for the heads.

4. Prepare some things for the children to fill their birds once they are ready.