Make a corrugated cardboard parrot

For kids Creative activities

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An easy craft to make with children: some scissors and a little glue are all you need to create pretty multicoloured birds!
These tropical corrugated cardboard birds are also very easy to hang from the ceiling.

Materials:

6 pieces of Canson® corrugated cardboard: brown, white, orange, yellow and blue
Canson® tissue paper: red, green, yellow and blue
Black dot stickers or black felt
Scissors
Glue
String

Can parrots really talk?

Contrary to popular belief, parrots and parakeets have not mastered our language.
However, some species have such incredible hearing that they are able to perfectly imitate sounds, including the human voice.
The most talented birds can imitate more than 1500 words of our vocabulary!

Making your bird

To make your bird, cut out a rectangle of white corrugated cardboard, fold it in half in the direction of the ridges and stick the two flat sides together.
Doubling over the corrugated cardboard makes it stronger and gets rid of any curling created by the roll.
Cut an oval out of the rectangle to form the body of the bird and add an orange beak and long yellow feathers to make the tail.

Cutting out the feathers

Accordion fold the tissue paper to make strips approximately 4 cm wide then cut feathers out of these strips (2-3 cm wide).
Because tissue paper is so thin, it is easier to cut shapes from several layers at once. It also saves a lot of time!

Gluing on the feathers

Stick the feathers to the parrot one by one, starting at the bottom and working up in bands of the same colour.
Be careful not to use too much glue, as it will damage the paper.
The lightness of the tissue paper gives the bird very airy plumage!

Add the parrot's eye

To make the parrot's eye, cut out a circle of blue corrugated cardboard and stick it onto the bird corrugated side down.
Add a black sticker to the middle of the blue circle (or make a black dot out of felt).

Making the cage and finishing touches

The birdcage is made using the same technique as the body of the bird: sticking the flat sides of two pieces of corrugated cardboard together.
Cut out a cage to fit the dimensions of your bird.
Finally, cut approximately 10 cm of string and tie it to the top of the cage.