Bird Wing Art

As we focused on Parts of a Bird in the Birds & Eggs theme from Experience Preschool, we created bird wing art.

So far we’ve learned about the Head & Beak, Body, the Feet & Claws and now the Wing.

Birds have hollow forelimbs that are covered with feathers called wings. All birds have feathers and wings, though not all wings are used for flight. A penguin is an example of a flightless bird.

Experience Preschool Teacher Guide

Bird Wing Art Invitation to Create

Invitations to Create are creative activities that allow children to explore materials and the process of art. Materials are provided and the child decides how to use them. For the Bird Wing Art activity, we have black and white paint, brushes, natural colored feathers, glue and a piece of gray paper.

I always use the Title Display and Inspiration Photo that are included in the materials for the Invitation to Create because real photos give children a realistic image of what a bird wing is. The word “wing” includes literacy. Sometimes my kids like to label their art or work on their letters. The Title Display and Inspiration Photo help me put together beautiful art displays after their work is complete.

My young group loves to mix paint! So that’s part of the process in our bird wing art.

The black and white mix beautifully together on the gray paper. We can see a mix of colors in the Inspiration Photo of the bird wing too!

Squeezing glue is an important skill as well as planning art. I love how this little one made a line of glue and then added feathers in a row.

The art isn’t supposed to look like the Inspiration Photo. I think it perhaps akes some time and awareness to appreciate child art! I’m just in love with what I see!

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Due to COVID19, I have varying numbers of children in attendance this month. This day I just had two so I combined their art in a display with another bird project. I love the soft, mostly neutral colors.

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Feathers for Lunch Story

What do you like to eat for lunch? This fun story is available online so we watched it there.

Feather Sort

We used a tray of four colors of feathers to sort onto paper plates. While this was quite easy for a 2 and 3-year old, it’s good practice!

I intentionally included varied shades of color as a challenge. I asked, “Is it more red or more purple?” to help them make a decision.

They enjoyed this activity and did it twice. Everything’s a competition!

WE tried a little patterning with feathers but these two are not quite ready for this concept. Maybe it was just that their attention span was gone. I love incorporating the colored feathers for hands on math activities.

Fly Away I Can Read Books

This day’s activities included the small group literacy I Can Read book: Fly Away!

I read the story aloud as the children followed along in their books. On each page, they traced the bird’s path with a finger.

Our sight words this month are: “play”, “love” and “away”.

Putting books in the hands of little ones is so powerful! They begin to see themselves as readers, learn how to turn pages, identify known objects, notice text and name letters. Older ones may recognize words and “read” the book themselves. These little readers are fabulous and always looked forward to by my group!