House of Burke: Contact Paper Parrot Feather Collage

Continuing with our bird activities, I put together a fun hands-on contact paper activity for Kingston using feathers! K is fascinated with feathers, as I'm sure most babies and toddlers are. For this craft, I was going for more of a bird of paradise feel. I wanted him to create a vibrant, beautiful bird like the ones he saw on our zoo trip! I knew this was going to be a hit with him because when he played with feathers previously, he loved it. Apparently we are very partial to feathers and contact paper. Contact paper is like glue for babies!

For this project you will need: contact paper, feathers, construction paper, two large googly eyes, glue, and scissors. As per usual, I sat my little munchkin in his high chair, taped down some contact paper sticky side up, and laid a giant pile of colorful feathers next to the paper. He grabbed a handful of them instantly.

He spent quite a bit of time just exploring the feathers: waving them, twisting them, throwing them in the air. As he picked up each one, I told him the color of the feather. I used words like, "feather", "downy", "soft", "bird" etc. to give him the language to describe what he was exploring.

Feathers are such a fun manipulative! As he played with the feathers, some dropped onto his collage and he eagerly ripped them off of the sticky paper exercising those fine motor skills. Then he would drop them back down. I found that with this activity unlike tissue paper, construction paper, etc. he did not seem to really place his feathers with purpose like he usually does. He was so intrigued by the colors and texture that he was kind of just throwing them around, picking them back up, and throwing them back down.

Eventually the entire paper was cover and he patted all of the feathers down. He was very eager to continue exploring, so I removed his collage and let him look at the feathers some more. I couldn't resist tickling him with the feathers. He let out the sweetest little giggles as he cringed and swatted at the feather!

I put a second piece of contact paper over the top to keep the feathers sealed in. This is what Kingston's collage looked like when he was finished.

Pretty right?! You could totally keep it just like this, however, I wanted to create a bird out of it. I knew Kingston would love looking and pointing at his funny little bird, so I took a piece of orange paper and freehanded a beak. Then I glued that down with two googly eyes. I trimmed the paper so that it would be more even. If you've seen some of our other projects, you will notice that I like the look of animals and creatures in square form for some reason! I loved the parrot just as is. You could cut it to look more parrot like if you wanted. I love the way i turned out and Kingston keeps pointing at it and grunting in excitement!