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Crafts and Activities for Toddlers and Preschoolers to Tweens

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Paper Plate Owls

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Turn some paper plates and fabric scraps into a bunch of adorable paper plate owls.

Here’s a cute, and easy  fall craft for your kids to make!  We made these paper plate owls on a total whim today when one of the hooligans said she’d like to make some owl crafts.

Since we’re working on our A-Z paper plate crafts series, I thought this would be perfect the Letter O craft in our series.

paper plate owls
These owls involved several fun and interesting steps. The kids really enjoyed making them and they turned out so cute.

Note: you may want to check out our folded paper plate owls and our cupcake liner owls too.

To make our paper plate owls, you’ll need:

supplies for making paper plate owls

(for your convenience, Amaazon Affilifate links have been added to this post)

  • Paper plates
  • Paint
  • White foam circles or white circles cut from paper (for eyes)
  • small black buttons
  • foam or construction paper (for claws and beaks)
  • Fabric Scraps (in contrasting colours) cut into 2 sets of “wings”, one large set and one smaller set.

Making our owls:

The morning was cool so we started off inside; I began by having the hooligans decorate their plates.  I set out a variety of Crayola paints and the children used several different techniques to apply their paint.

3 methods of toddler painting on a paper plate

When our paint was dry (a blast from the hair dryer helped!), we headed outside and decorated our owls.

We tried using various gluing methods.  Glue sticks (not bad), and glue bottles (a bit too tough for little hands to squeeze), but we ended up doing what we usually do, which is dipping paint brushes into a small container of glue, and brushing it onto the project.  This is my favourite way for really young children to use glue.

First they layered on their wings.  For each wing, I had cut two sizes of contrasting fabric swatches. A pointy oval that follows the curve of the paper pate works well.

Once they had their wings where they wanted them, they added their white foam piece eyes, and they added black button to those.

4 paper plate owl craft

For the final touch they added their feet!  I’d chosen a star-flower type of shape; you’ll see a few of them in this next photo.  I simply cut those in half, and they looked like perfect, little claws!  Those were stickers so the girls merely peeled the backs off, and placed them at the bottom of their plate.

gluing beaks and feet to paper plate owl

To finish, I taped a loop of yarn to the top-back of the owls so they could be hung up and displayed. 🙂

What do you think?  Aren’t these just the cutest little things you ever did see?

3 paper plate owls hanging in pine tree

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Comments

    • sandra Bevins

      Thanks very much for all your hard work with these lovely craft ideas. I have a mixture of ages and I can always find something for all of them on here. xx

      Reply

  3. Nicole

    Your site is awesome! Beautiful crafts that are simple yet provide great learning experience for the children. I also appreciate that your supply lists are not outrageous (in both price and items needed). We have done many of your crafts and have had a lot of fun! Thanks for what you do!

    Reply

    • happyhooligans

      Thank you so much for your lovely comment, Nicole. It makes me so happy to know others are trying my ideas. And yes, I’m with you about the craft supplies. I love to keep things easy and inexpensive so as many people as possible can do them. We wouldn’t craft nearly as much if I had to be running out to the store and spending money on supplies all the time. It’s amazing what you can find around the house when you start looking. 🙂

      Reply

  5. Cindy B

    Love the fabric wings! I so often forget to dig thru my fabric bin. Thanks for the reminder And cute ideas. You have a bunch of lucky hooligans!

    Reply

    • happyhooligans

      Aw, thanks, Cindy. 🙂 We don’t dig through ours often enough either. I think I’ll try and use more fabric in our crafts here this year. I love that the scraps are so tactile and colourful. It’s so fun to go through them all, touching and looking at all the different textures and patterns. That’s an activity in itself.

      Reply

  8. Claire

    Oh my goodness…these are so cute! Will definitely be trying these with the kids I see for Occupational Therapy at school. I love how unique the finished products were – each with their own style! 🙂 Thanks for the cute idea!

    Reply

  11. Crystal

    Thanks for sharing this cute craft on my weekly linky party at CrystalandComp. I will be sharing on my fb page and I’m headed over to pin it right now! 🙂

    Reply

  13. Jackie Higgins

    I love all of these owl ideas. My son’s class is the Owls and so his teacher has lots of owl decorations. I now have tons of ideas for little things he can make to give to her!! 🙂

    Reply

  14. Pauline, Lessons Learnt Journal

    How absolutely adorable Jackie! I get quite gah-gah over owls and this is just too cute. I’m sure my kids would love making this. Thanks for linking this up to the Kids Co-Op. I’ll be featuring your post in my rainy day play roundup this week. xo P

    Reply

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