This is a revised project from
last year. I have a "thing" for bird nests. I have a few real nests that I have collected after storms and am fascinated by the construction. In one of the robin nests, you can see the mud and grass, but you can also see that the bird used string and plastic, and lots of "recycled" materials. Birds are pretty resourceful and that was the first reason I wanted to do this project!
Last year, I had the students draw trees with construction paper crayons on colored paper, create patterned papers to cut eggs from, and glue tinted, shredded newspaper on for the nest. This year, I changed a few things and I like the results more:
Day 1
- Blow thinned brown tempera paint with a straw on white paper to create the branches (like I've seen in so many cherry blossom projects).
- Roll a peeled blue crayon on it's side to create a sky with a subtle texture.
- Use green crayons to draw leaves.
Day 2
- Each student cuts an egg shape out of magazine paper (I pre-cut swatches that had interesting colors, textures, or patterns on them for the students to choose from.)
- Glue eggs on the paper, slightly above a branch so it won't look like the nest is about to tumble.
- Glue nest materials on paper covering the bottom of the egg.
This year the nest materials were made up of newspaper that I sprayed with watered down brown paint and shredded, and small pieces of raffia. I think the raffia adds more interest. I tried to talk about composition and scale but this was lost on some students. I talked about "zooming in" on a branch so the nest would be the right size. Some just couldn't see the brown paint as a branch and instead used it as a whole tree. First grade logic. :)
