Materials
Tagboard scissors construction paper (yellow for legs, white for beak, andblue or blue-green for body) 6mm wiggly eyes white glue white paper plates cut in half crayons (white, yellow, blue-green, yellow-green, red-orange, purple) glitter green feathers
Instructions
1. Discuss peafowl with the children. Explain that the peacock is male and is bright in color, and the peahen is female and is dull in color. A baby peafowl is called a chick, which hatches from an egg. They belong to the pheasant fowl family. Peafowl eat berries, seeds, insects, snakes, and mice. Peacocks are kept as pets in China and India.
2. Show pictures and real peacock feathers (feathers can be bought at a craft store).
3. Demonstrate how feathers usually trail behind a peacock, then up behind him to make a fan.
4. Make peacocks with the children. Beforehand, make a tagboard pattern of the body, legs, and beak.
5. Encourage the children to use the pattern to cut out the body, beak, and two legs. Show them where to glue the beak, eyes, and legs on the body.
6. Encourage them to draw details on the body.
7. Give each child a paper plate half. Ask them to draw purple fan lines on the raised side. Then, demonstrate how to draw a series of circles on the fan line, beginning with red-orange, followed by yellow-green and blue-green.
8. Ask the children to put glue dots in the center of each circle. Sprinkle with glitter.
9. The children finish by gluing feathers on the head and the fan on the body.
