Paper Plate Peacock

We braved the rain this past week and took a trip to the Tracy Aviary. This was our second time there and yet again, it exceeded our expectations. Since we went during the week, we were the only people at the Close Encounter Bird Show, so Luke was able to have 3 birds land on his arm. A very exciting adventure for a 5 year old.  :)

One of my favorite birds is the peacock. We got some really close up views of some during our visit and tried to pay close attention to all the details because I knew I wanted to do a peacock craft this week to go along with our visit.

Last year during our Bird Week we made a similar peacock craft out of a coffee filter, but we added a new twist to it this year and I'm delighted with how it turned out.

Here is the run down on how we created our Peacock:

1. Paint the top side of a paper plate with green water color paint. PS-I recently purchased some liquid watercolors from Oriental Trading. Could not be happier with them! They are going to last a billion years longer than the standard dry watercolors.

2. Once we were finished painting the paper plate green, we went back with blue paint and painted some random stripes all over the paper plate. The colors blended really nicely since the plate was still wet. Here is what our plate looked like when we were finished. Let it dry completely. We put ours on the front porch in the sun to hurry up the process since we are inpatient!

3. While the paper plate was drying, I drew the outline of a bowling ball shape on a half sheet of blue cardstock paper for Luke to cut out.

4. Next we added the details to the Peacock body. A yellow beak (which I cut out), some wiggly eyes, and we taped 4 cocktail toothpicks to the back of his head. I wish I could take credit for the brilliant toothpick idea, but I saw it over at Tippytoe Crafts when we did our craft last year. I had a hard time finding them last year but I finally found some at Zurchers, a local party store. After we were done adding the details to the peacock body, we glued it onto the paper plate.

5. To finish our craft, we used different sized sequins to make the spots on our peacock. First, we glued on an extra large gold sequin.

6. Then put a dab of glue on each gold sequin to add the next color. We ended up doing three colors, but you could totally get away with only doing two. We stuck with green and blue sequins to look like a peacock, but it would be fun to have a class choose whatever color they wanted to make the peacocks extra colorful.

The spots are shiny and beautiful just like on a peacock.

Here is Luke's completed peacock. So precious, right?!!

A great book to go along with this craft is Three Hens and a Peacock by Lester Laminack.

It's about a glamorous Peacock who comes to stay at the Tucker Farm and attracts all kind of attention from customers. The hens think it's not fair, and the Peacock doesn't feel like he's as much use as the chickens, so the farm dog suggests they switch roles. You'll have to read it to see how the chickens try to be glamorous and the Peacock tries to lay an egg. It's a really cute story!

Happy Crafting!!

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