Kindergarten Owls

There are just some projects I will forever be repeating because of the absolute cuteness. Is that terrible reasoning?

This is the second time I have done these owls, here is the post from the first time in my earlier blogging days where my posts were underdeveloped so I'm doing the full version of the project now...

I Can statement: I can understand what happens when two different colors of paint mix.
(This is also a big project for cutting strategies as well)

Day 1: Started with an adorable book by Laura Datta and Matt Buckingham called the Best Nest I got my copy used via Amazon since it is an older book. You could use any Owl book but I love this guy!

We did a very quick draw along of the owls for sake of size and using the whole page (BIG struggle with my kinders). A big letter "U" and a curved line to connect it at the top for the ears, TADA!

 I got a lot of "what about the wings!?" (and other parts), so we looked at my example and noticed how those parts of the owl were out of paper not paint, and that we were just using paint for our owl today. This led to our discussion about not wanting all our owls to look the same and what happens when you mix one color with another. About as basic coloring mixing theory as you can get-- "It changes".

For painting, they got two sections of an egg carton one with brown and the second with the color of their choice to mix for their owl. This is when I start drilling them for the rest of their elementary lives "slooooooooow on the outside, faster on the inside" when filling bigger areas in.

This didn't take 45 minutes so the rest of the time was spent finishing up their arm trees by adding leaves.

Day 2: Started with this awesome timelapse video of a bird building a nest since they would be building their owl nest today.

Before they created their owl nest we worked on creating the rest of the owl: wings, eyes, and beak. This is where a variety of cutting strategies were/can be introduced like folding and cutting on the fold for the beak and folding and cutting off the fold to get two (or more) of the same pieces.  I had paper pre-cut that was approximately the right sizes so things didn't end up too big or too small for the body size.

When the first person had their owl assembled I used theirs to glue a few pieces of the nest as a demo. They had pre-cut strips of newspaper and pieces of string to use to build the nest. I really emphasised making it actually fit their owl and not wanting him to fall out! I did limit the amount of string because they don't quite have down how to glue string and I imagined it all falling off in the hallway!

Last year I had them do a paper towel tube as a branch which just didn't look the way I imagined so I'm incredibly happy with this change in the project.

McDill Elementary...

Jefferson Elementary...