Australian Bird Craft Inspired By “Busy Beaks”

Are you looking for a fun craft to make with your children for Book Week? These cute Australian birds were inspired by one of this year’s CBCA shortlisted Early Childhood books, “Busy Beaks,” written and illustrated by Sarah Allen.

“Spend a day with Australia’s most vibrant and unique feathered friends.

Full of splashing shorebirds, clattering cockatoos, parading penguins and greedy galahs, Busy Beaks is the perfect introduction to birds of all shapes and sizes.“

Busy Beaks is a wonderful mix of picture story book and fact book in one beautifully illustrated edition. It guides readers through a day in the life of our Australian birds from sunrise to sunset. My students just loved finding out interesting facts about their favourite birds in the Facts and Feathers section of the book, and sharing stories about their encounters with our feathered friends. Today we are going to make our own busy beaks, using cardboard tubes and coloured paper.

To make your own busy beak, you will need the following craft supplies:

Supplies

• Cardboard tubes
• Colour paper
• Template
• Gluestick
• Scissors
• Grey lead pencil
• Black felt tip pen
• Colour pencils / felt tip pens

You have a choice of making your bird from colour paper or using white paper and colouring it in. We will go through the colouring in option first.

Kookaburra

Step 1

Let’s make a kookaburra! To make this cute little bird, download the template, colour it in and cut it out.

Step 2

To make your body, place your cardboard tube on some white paper, and mark out the length of the tube with a grey lead pencil. Roll the tube along the paper to ensure you have enough paper to go around the roll with a small overlap. Cut out the paper, colour in if desired and glue to the cardboard tube.

Step 3

Time to wing it! Glue the wing & tail combo to the body of the bird.

Step 4

Add the eye patches. Glue the eye patches just above the wings.

Step 5

Glue the eyes on the patches and colour in the pupils.

Step 6

Make your beak. To make your beak make 2 folds either side of the middle of the beak and glue closed. Add some glue to the folded edge and stick to your bird inbetween the wings. And your finished! How cute is your kookaburra!?

Cockatoo & Galah

Step 1

To make a cockatoo, galah or even a parrot, the first step is to download and print the template. This time we will go through using colour paper. Let’s make a galah!

Step 2

Once you have printed your template, cut out the pieces and place them on the colour paper. Trace around the template pieces and cut out.

Step 3

To make your body, place your cardboard tube on some colour paper, and mark out the length of the tube with a grey lead pencil. Roll the tube along the paper to ensure you have enough paper to go around the roll with a small overlap. Cut out the colour paper and glue to the cardboard tube.

Step 4

Add your tail feathers. Put glue on the top section of the tail feathers and stick to the bottom section of the cardboard tube. Now glue your second set of tail feathers slightly higher than the first set, so you can see the bottom layer peeking through.

Step 5

Stick your wings to either side of your bird. Make sure the smaller part of the wing is at the bottom.

Step 6

Make your beak. To make your beak make 2 folds either side of the middle of the beak and glue closed. Add some glue to the folded edge and stick to your bird inbetween the wings.

Step 7

Add your eyes. Glue the eyes on your bird either side of the beak. Draw some pupils on the eyes using a black pencil or felt tip pen.

Step 8

If you are making a cockatoo or galah it’s time to add your crest. To do this make 2 small cuts on the top of your birds head, 1 at the front and 1 at the back. Now slide your crest into the 2 cuts and your finished! It’s time to meet your new feathered friend.

Here are some more feathered friends you might like to make, a cockatoo, kookaburra, palm cockatoo or eastern rosella.

Or why not create your own bird? Here is one my daughter had lots of fun making. Pink seagull maybe…?

Looking for some Book Week display inspiration? Take a look at my space display here: Old Worlds, New Worlds, Other Worlds Book Week Display 2021

Or if you would some more craft ideas, why not try one of these: Tent Craft Inspired by “There’s No Such Thing” | Bears in Woolly Jumpers Inspired by “Norton and the Bear” | Cardboard Tube Bunny