Toddler Art Class: Feather Collage

Fluffy soft feathers in a rainbow of bright colors--a feast for the senses!

Art Project:  Feather Collage
Supplies:
feathers
gluestick
construction paper

Book:
   Birds / Henkes, Kevin

A good day / Henkes, Kevin

Music to make art by:
  Hootenanny [sound recording] / Bregar, Johnny

What Kids Do: 
explore the gluestick (I have no idea why they seemed to bleach out some of the colored construction paper!)

 (it's sticky on my hand!)

 explore the feathers (they tickle my cheek!)

 (and they float if you blow on them)

 (and they're cute tucked into your hair!)

 They glued feathers onto the paper:

 Some sorted by color

 Some went for minimalism:

 Some went for full coverage!

 One older sibling was inspired by our story about birds and asked her mother how to draw a bird, then spend the class creating an amazing study of bird illustrations (it's only about half done in this photo).

 
Hindsight Tip:  I chose to go simple this time (I could have added scissors and paper and told kids they could cut out feather shapes and snip the edges to look like the texture of a feather!  We could have incorporated die-cut birds!) and it was a good thing.   Simplicity really encourages toddlers to fully explore the limited supplies that they're given.
 I was also afraid that it would turn into a giant feather-throwing disaster area mess, but there was actually very little cleaning involved this week.  (This might have been thanks to me putting a limited number of feathers on each table and refilling if necessary rather than giving each table vast bucketloads of feathers to begin with.)

Adult Challenge:  Give your child permission to experiment and "fail."  If your child forgets to put the glue on and then realizes that the feathers fall off when they pick up their page, they will learn from that experience that glue is the key ingredient to making feathers stick!  And, p.s. there isn't really any way to 'fail" at this project.  Except maybe eating all the feathers and getting sick.  I'd recommend putting a stop to that particular area of investigation before it goes too far.