My girls and I have been talking about birds the last few days, inspired by the ‘how do birds fly?’ question. One of the things we’ve done is look at the difference in beaks, wings and tails on different birds, and in the course of our play-learning, we decided to make a bird mobile.
The girls then decided they wanted it to be a present for the new baby upstairs from us, so we took it to them. They didn’t look quite as impressed with it as the girls (and I!) were, but never mind – we enjoyed making and gifting it.
What you need to make a bird mobile:
You will need:
- Bird template: Print the template for bird mobile here. I couldn’t fit our coloured paper into the printer, so printed onto white paper, laminated it and then traced onto coloured paper.
- Glue: a glue gun works best for these sorts of projects! This is a great little glue gun* from Amazon
- String: we used a beautiful decorative string with butterflies and beads. I can’t find it online, but there are similar here. You can add bells too.
- Corrugated paper
- Black pen
How to make your bird mobile
To start with, I found bird templates online, and put them on a document – you can print that here if you want to use the same ones – before cutting them out and laminating them so we could use them again.
Next, trace the outline of each bird, then flip it over to trace the mirror image (for the ‘back’). If you use double sided paper, it’s easier, but then your string will be visible in the final product.
Fill in the extra bits with a black pen – like the wings, the beak, feathers and so on.
Glue the two halves together, leaving a small gap at the top for the string to go in. (Or glue the string on one half, then glue the two halves of paper together.)
Use a sharp cutter to cut through the centre of the appropriate birds to slot the ‘wings’ through.
You may also need to ‘trim’ around each bird to make sure it’s identical back and front.
Cut the string to the appropriate length, and glue to a strip of corrugated paper. Cut an equal sized strip to cover it, so the string is sandwiched in between. Add another bit of string to the other side of the corrugated paper to act as a hanger.
Leave everything to dry, then hang out your lovely bird mobile!
Talking points while making your bird mobile:
How do birds differ?
Are all their wings the same? How about tails and beaks? How do different birds use their different shapes?
What birds do you think these shapes represent? (My girls said Blue Tit, Dove and Swallow).