Oil Pastel Birds

Looking for a new project idea for my 4th grade students and wanting to focus on drawing, I decided to try birds.

Procedure:
I printed out many photos of various tropical birds for the kids and laminated them. Together we examined the birds for basic shapes: circles, ovals, rectangles and triangles. Breaking the birds down into simple shapes helped the kids to draw the bird without being overwhelmed. After drawing the basic shapes, the kids rounded out the edges and tried to blend the shapes together before adding color. We used oil pastels and talked about blending colors to make them look a bit more realistic. We also discuss shading.

Here are our results!