Making Shapes into an Owl (Art is a Whoot!)

Have you noticed that owls are everywhere?! They are all over adorable fabrics, being made into sweet felt pillows, and being crafted by little (and big) hands all over the Internet. When I saw Card a la Carte’s little pillow-box owls, I fell in love.

After taking a closer look and purchasing a few fun scrapbooking papers, I was determined to make these with my son on a larger scale. This was a great review of shapes, good practice cutting with scissors, and combined with a non-fiction book, a lesson in one of the most fascinating nocturnal animals.

For information on owls, we read Patricia Whitehouse’s book Barn Owls (What's Awake?). We learned that owls lay eggs, what they eat, where they nest, and that they can turn their heads to see what is behind them (whoa, that’s cool!).

Here’s a list of the shapes we used for each owl:

• Rectangle – 1 for the body
• Oval – 2 for each bird (in the same color as the body) for the wings
• Big circle – 2 for each bird in white for the big curious eyes
• Triangle – 1 cut from orange cardstock for the beak
• Heart – 1 cut from orange cardstock for the feet
• Small circle – 12, depending on the size, in printed scrapbooking paper for the body feathers (one of which you'll need to cut in half), plus 2 in black for the pupils. (We used my  Martha Stewart Punch All Over the Page™ 1 ½-inch circle punch.)

We attached the small circles on the body first with a gluestick, curling up the bottom of each to “fluff the feathers.” Then we added the eyes, wings, feet, and beak.

Let me introduce our new pet owls.

Lastly, my son recorded what he’d learned on an awesome free printable Erin from Eberhart’s Explorers shared on her blog. Visit her site for this amazing “Owls Are/Have/Can” chart.