Welcome to springtime and easter. This children’s craft requires simple materials and makes a really beautiful dove. This is perfect because first, we love celebrating all the beautiful birds during springtime. And second, in early spring we love to talk about rainbows, which naturally leads to the story of Noah as a spring mainstay for us as well. That is how we end up with these pretty paper doves with rainbow for a little color.

One of my favorite tips for children’s crafts is cotton swabs, cotton swabs, cotton swabs. This is not just for the truly cotton swab genre of crafts (like this one). But anytime when you’d reach for a paint brush, I pause and ask myself if a cotton swab could get it done instead, meaning the  bush stroke doesn’t have to be large or cover a lot of area. This makes doing an art project with a group of children much easier because every color can have its own “brush” (the cotton swab.) And, clean up is only throwing cotton swabs away rather than washing a paint brush for every color used by every child.

I get a small thrill throwing all the cotton swabs away in one second with no washing.

MATERIALS

1. white paper plates
2. paints
3. cotton swabs
4. scissors
5. glue
6. pencil
7. yellow and black marker

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Cut out bird outline and two wings using sample image above. It is optional to draw in pencil first.
2. Cut out three bird pieces.
3. Draw a small eye and color beak with an yellow marker.
4. Paint stripes of color on ridges of paper plates with cotton swab.
5. Allow to dry and glue wings onto bird’s body.

As pretty much always, I make customizations on age. For youngers, I draw the bird outline for them and they cut it out. Olders, I just show them the sample and they have autonomy and creative control. Art is a blessing.

All of my posts about springtime and easter can be found here.