2nd Grade: Quetzal Birds
2nd graders learned about Quetzal birds for their first project of the year. Quetzals are beautiful birds found in Mexico and Central America. In fact, it is the national bird of Guatemala. It is on their currency. The name "quetzal" means "large brilliant tail feather". Quetzals have red bellies with green feathers. They can be up to 13 inches long! We looked at some photographs of rather magnificent quetzals. We also explored birdcages. Quetzals are wild birds, so the quetzal birds students created were placed outside the cage. Birdcages can be many different shapes. Some are simple and some are complex.
For this project, I had a number of different shaped birdcages on posters for students to refer to. I also did a step by step of a few of the birdcages. Students drew the cage in pencil, traced in sharpie, and added features and details. Cages had to have a door and a hook. It could also have patterns and "feet".
I also did a step by step of drawing a quetzal bird. These were drawn on 8 x 11 white cardstock. The card was folded in half. On the left half, students drew the head and body. On the right half, students drew the long tail feather. I did a number of step by step examples to show the many different ways a tail feather could be represented. Students traced the bird with sharpie and added color with oil pastels. Last step, was to cut out the birds and glue them to the cage.
I used the ideas for this fabulous project from:
I think these came out so wonderful!
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