Birds Eggs Craft
At this time of year its very difficult not to be thinking about eggs! In this activity we will be diverting our attention away from the chocolate variety and instead making some realistic looking eggs to go in our birds nests we made earlier this week.
So lets start by looking at the real thing.
Saffron Walden holds a large egg collection - made up of the smaller collections of several naturalists. In the past egg collecting was a very popular, It was so in fact, that it led to the decline of many of our bird species, and led in 1954 to the Protection of Birds Act, making it illegal to take or destroy the eggs or nest of any wild bird.
The collections were collected before the protection of birds act was introduce and used in the Museum for education and scientific research. Lets take a closer look:
At this time of year its very difficult not to be thinking about eggs! In this activity we will be diverting our attention away from the chocolate variety and instead making some realistic looking eggs to go in our birds nests we made earlier this week.
So lets start by looking at the real thing.
Saffron Walden holds a large egg collection - made up of the smaller collections of several naturalists. In the past egg collecting was a very popular, It was so in fact, that it led to the decline of many of our bird species, and led in 1954 to the Protection of Birds Act, making it illegal to take or destroy the eggs or nest of any wild bird.
The collections were collected before the protection of birds act was introduce and used in the Museum for education and scientific research. Lets take a closer look:
Tray one: Guillmot Eggs
Tray two: from left to right, Egyptian vulture, White tailed eagle, Osprey (top) Gyrfalcon (bottom), Peregrine falcon (top) Orange legged hobby (middle) Hobby (bottom), Merlin, Kestrel.
Tray three: Small to medium sized British birds including House sparrows, Swallow, Robbins etc
As you can see each kind of birds egg is different to the others, the vary in size shape and pattern. You could think of each as a tiny (or very large in the case of an Ostrich) work of art.
Why don't you see if you can make your own birds eggs! great as a Easter craft!
Activity
To make the eggs you can use either air dry clay, salt dough or very fine paper mache using toilet paper, the recipes for the slat dough and paper mache are below.
Salt dough
- flour 200g
- salt 100g
- water
- (optional) a little pva glue
Mix together the flour a salt - and 2 spoonful's of pva if using then slowly add spoonful's of water to the mixture, stirring as you go until a non sticky dough is formed.
Super Fine paper mache
- Toilet roll
- water
- PVA or wallpaper paste
Put your toilet roll in a bowl and pour in 500ml of water - wait for the toilet roll to become wet through and then pull out the cardboard tube from inside. When the toilet roll is super soggy, tear it up it to small pieces and squeeze out the excess water. Then mix in your pva or wallpaper paste a spoonful at a time (pre mixed) mixing vigorously as you go until you have a firm smooth-ish dough like consistency.
How to make the eggs
Once you have your egg making material - get shaping! look closely at the egg pictures above - or search on the internet - try and mimic the shape and size of real birds eggs.
Once you have made your eggs its time to let them dry - you can speed the process up a little by placing them in a warm oven (no more than 50c)
Once they are dry
Get painting! again look at the pictures of the birds eggs and see if you can make them look really realistic! good luck!
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