Homes for our Feathered Friends

1st Grade

Drawings of Birds & Painted Bird Houses

For this project the students were to create a directed drawing of a bird, as well as, create a birdhouse out of pre-painted paper (the students painted one color each in a previous class).

We begun by talking about the changes in weather and how it was becoming colder out; we said that when it becomes colder we tend to stay inside more.  We discussed that animals were doing the same thing, that as it gets colder the animals want to be warmer so they stay inside of their homes to avoid being cold.  One type of animal discussed were birds.
The students learned how to draw a bird following the steps from the amazing Joy Sikorski (see the image below).

After making the grown-up bird the students made either a little baby bird following the same directions or 3 tiny eggs waiting to hatch.  

Once our small bird families were made, the students painted 3 pieces of paper using their table color.  For this part of the students learned the difference between a tint and shade.  A tint is where you add white to a base color (in this case their table color) and a shade is where you add black to a base color.  Once their papers dried they were cut into 1 inch strips that the students picked from to create a mulit-colored bird house.