Making hummingbirds is one of my favourite tree crafts. The Hummingbird is also called the messenger of joy and it is always good luck to see a hummingbird. I saw lots of hummingbirds around the time of my daughter’s birth. Recently she and I made these cute hummingbird crafts to hang on trees in honour of tree planting hero and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai who died several months ago. She used to tell a beautiful story about the hummingbird: See it here: VIDEO: I will be a hummingbird. I will do the best I can.
My daughter had a lot of fun making the hummingbird craft as it involved finger painting. We made a bunch of hummingbirds and hung them from trees in Canada and two months later we brought a hummingbird with us to hang from a tree in Zambia. We were in Zambia to donate trees to children from MY CHARITY – The ChariTREE Foundation. While there, I told the children about the story of the hummingbird. VIDEO: from our children’s tree project expedition to Zambia.
What you’ll need to make your own hummingbird craft:
- Green and blue finger paint
- Silver sparkle paint in a tube
- Paint brush
- Black and white construction paper
- Dark Blue marker
- Scissors
- Glue
- Glitter
- hole punch
- green ribbon
How to:
- Have your child finger paint two pieces of paper with blue, green and silver (or whatever colour combo you want) – try to fill both pages with paint.
- Before the paint dries have your child sprinkle sparkles over the hummingbird.
- Let dry for three hours.
- Cut the two pages into one big oval (for the body); two big tingles (for wings); one smaller triangle (for the tail); and one small but long tingle (for the beak). See image.
- Fold the wings and the tail piece accordion style and glue them to the back of the oval. Add the beak, draw the birds eves
- Glue the pieces together and use the marker to draw on the bird’s eyes and some hearts on the hummingbird’s body.
- Draw lines along the wings with your silver sparkle paint.
- Once dry punch a hole with a hole punch in one wing and tie a ribbon through it.
- Go outside and hang it from a tree.
When we made our hummingbirds we had no idea how far they would go. See video: http://youtu.be/pTDIQfwcsQA