Here's a fun peacock craft for younger kids to do - it's quick, easy and you will certainly have what you need on hand. We tried three different peacocks which I have described as "easy", "harder" and "hardest" but all are relatively simple to do and perfect for a crowd!
To start with I downloaded, printed and cut out the peacock body images from the “Peacock Playdough Mat” and the “Complete the Peacock Picture” pages. Now I had an option of a colourful peacock body or a black and white peacock body.
Cutting out the peacock bodies
For the first, easy peacock, I folded colourful A4 sheets of paper in half and then drew a semi-circle on three different coloured pages.
Drawing semi-circles to make the peacocks tail
The semi-circles were three different sizes, with the idea being that the biggest semi-circle would act as the back feathers, and then we would layer the next two semi-circles inside it to get the effect of shorter feathers.
Our "easy" peacock, ready for decorating
Just for fun, you could decorate your feathers with whatever you have at home. For this peacock I used some colourful buttons, but you could just draw in decorations, or add some beads or stickers - anything that you want.
Our "easy" peacock decorated with buttons - and looking quite special!
For the second peacock we started by cutting strips of paper. We halved A4 sheets and then folded them in half again four times, giving us a total of 8 strips.
Making strips for our "harder" peacock collage
Before I glued anything down I first traced around the peacock’s body so I knew where the feathers would need to go. Then we only glued the bottom bit of the strips down, so the top edges were loose. My son had this idea; he said it would give the effect of feathers if the tops could move.
Adding the first strips. We could see where to place them because we had drawn in an outline of the body
We stuck all of the strips down before we added in the body or any extra decoration.
The first layer of peacock feathers done, ready to add the body
The peacock's body was then glued on top
For this peacock we chose to use some crafting gems to decorate the feathers.
Our finished peacock, with decorated feathers
For our third peacock, the "hardest" of the three, we stuck with the idea of strips of colourful paper as feathers, but this time we cut three different colours in three different lengths. We glued down the longest first, added the middle length next and finally glued the shortest strip on top. Once again we only glued the bottom end of all the strips because we liked the effect it gave when the edges were loose.
Stacking our feather strips for our "hardest" peacock
We also liked how it looked once all the strips of paper were in place!
Colourful peacock feathers for this collage!
Then we added our decorations. On this peacock we added gold stickers and a few crafting gems. And then we glued down the body of the peacock.
And here's our finished peacock collage, decorated with stickers and craft gems
We loved how bright and cheerful the finished peacocks were! And they were particularly satisfying as we made them using items which we already had in the house.
Three finished peacocks!
Thanks to Shelly and her kids for these fantastic peacock paper collage ideas! Will you try making some with your own children? If you do, send us in a photo - we would love to see them!
Shelly is a home educating parent of two children aged 10 and 12. She blogs at ofamily learning together where she shares ideas on the different learning activities that they do including lots of hand-on maths, arts and crafts and anything else that is part of their home educating lifestyle.
