I quickly drew a picture for him to use as a guide, and added some foam stickers, a googley eye, and some decorating options (watercolor pencils, watercolor paints, glitter glue).You know once he saw the glitter glue he was all over this, right? :) Mmmm… sparkly…
As he put his little bird together I guided him by naming a shape for him to pick out, asking him where that shape was on the picture I had drawn, and then talking about that particular part of the bird. This was a more mama-led activity than most of our crafts, but I wanted a little shape reviewing, and I used it to talk about the parts of a bird. They have wings, not arms; a beak or bill instead of a nose and mouth; feathers instead of bare skin or fur, etc. I was sneaking in a little biology. ;)
After he glued everything in place the decorating began! Of course he went straight for the glitter glue first, then used a couple of the watercolor pencils (although he did not actually paint over them with water), then used q-tips in the watercolor paints to fill in some areas.
I just love how this little birdie turned out. :) M named him “Easter Bird”. He sure is a colorful one!
I made a template of the shapes we used, although it would be simple to do without them. If you are interested you can download it here.
It would be neat to use feathers to decorate this little bird, but I. can. not. stand. feathers. Uggh, the mess they make! M can use feathers at Grandma’s house, hee hee.
Have a beautiful day! :)
, by Cathryn Sil. 
This book has lovely illustrations (I think watercolors and perhaps acrylics… I couldn’t find the exact mediums used listed anywhere in the book) by John Sil, a well-known wildlife artist. The text is brief and easy to understand, and this book acts as a wonderful introduction to various kinds of birds, as well as simple facts about birds (ie. some birds fly, some swim, others run). 
, by Priscilla Belz Jenkins. 
This is a “Let’s-Read-and-Find-Out-About-Science” Stage 1 book. It is chock-full of great information and detailed illustrations! It talks about many different kinds of birds, but gives detailed information about Robins in particular. It explains and illustrates the steps of making a nest, shows the development of a baby bird within an egg, and there is a great feather identification page with 24 different species listed. This is an amazing book and M was pretty interested in it. I appreciated that the book had “normal” text on each page and then additional little blurbs throughout for more info. It can get to be a bit long and you can take cues from your child about whether they want to know all the additional information or not.
, by Margret and H.A. Rey (the writers of Curious George). 
This is just a cute and fun book. We love the Reys and pretty much anything they’ve written. Little Whiteblack wants to collect some exciting stories to tell his friends in Penguinland. So he sets off and has quite an exciting adventure! The more we read this book the more interesting it became… I enjoyed the difference between the cold land Whiteblack is from and the camel he meets from the desert. He also meets up with an ostrich family, another bird that can’t fly. I think there’s a lot of great conversation starters in this book as well as good jumping off points to learn about other animals and their habitats.
This book is just funny, funny, funny. M loves it and laughs at it every time we read it. Two birds return to their nest to find a very large egg in it and although they have a few misgivings they decide to keep it and let it hatch. The baby “bird” doesn’t really look much like a bird, and he’s very hungry… extremely hungry. Eventually it’s time for him to learn to fly and this is where M really cracks up. :) It was a great book for learning that many animals, not just birds, come from eggs.