Feather-Painted Flamingos

Today was flamingo day! It was so fun learning about these birds. I love when I learn something new along with the children. I took last year's flamingo craft and changed it up a bit. I used the same pattern and traced a bunch of flamingo bodies and feet on white paper.

My original template was just something I drew myself while looking at a cartoon of a flamingo. If you don't feel like drawing your own, you can do a google search of flamingo templates. I put out a bunch of pink crayons so the kids could color the beak and feet. (Last year they colored the whole thing.) I also put out some black crayons for the tip of the beak.

Then, for the body, I put out three different shades of pink paint and added feathers.

The kids used the feathers as paintbrushes and gently swept the feathers across the paper.

It didn't need to be completely covered.

When they were dry I cut them out and assembled them the same way I did last year, by using tape to attach the pipe cleaners to the body, and more tape to attach the feet to the bottom of the pipe cleaners. (Although this year I used two full pipe cleaners. Last year I cut one in half. So our flamingos are much taller this year!) And I again taped two feathers to the back. But we did one more thing. As long as we had the pink paint out, I decided to paint each child's hand to make a print for the wing. When dry and cut out, the kids attached the wing and added a wiggle eye.

And those are our flamingos!

At the writing center today we learned about the letter F, so we practiced writing fly, feather and flamingo. Then the kids could draw a picture to go along with the words. I loved the flamingos they made, so I just had to take pictures!

I love the black flight feathers on the wings. The kids learned so much today!

Fun Fact: A flamingo's eye is bigger than its brain!

**Linking up to Sharing Saturday and TGIF!**