Bird Pictures with First Graders & Studying Audubon

I am so proud of how well my first graders drew these beautiful birds and I’m excited to share them with you. We started by reading the beautiful book The Boy Who Drew Birds: A Story of John James Audubon.  This book is a wonderful connection to science as Audubon was a fascinating man who studied the migration of birds and painted them.  Your budding scientists will love this story.

The students looked at reference photos of birds from books.  They drew a chosen bird on a piece of 12″ x 18″ white construction paper.  After drawing in pencil, they outlined in Sharpie marker and colored them in with regular crayons, Crayola neon twistable crayons , Crayola construction paper crayons, and woodless colored pencils .  The birds did not have to be realistically colored.  They could use their “artistic license”!

After coloring in the birds, the children painted their backgrounds with flourescent tempera cakes and regular tempera cakes.  I love how each one is unique, expressive and colorful!  They got to practice their observational drawing skills by observing the different parts of the birds and gained experience painting with a brush.