How to Draw a Bird

April 8, 2023 by Sarah White Leave a Comment

There are all sorts of weird holidays out there, and recently as I was scrolling through a list of them I saw that April 8 is draw a bird day. I don’t know why, but it seems as good a reason as any to share some how to draw a bird videos.

It’s also appropriate because this year marks the 20th anniversary of the book Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus by Mo Willems, who shares how to draw pigeon regularly (and recently taught the whole audience of The Tonight Show how to draw pigeon’s head using the letters of his first name).

There are a lot of great easy tutorials for kids (or adults) who want to learn how to draw birds.

Art Projects for Kids has a simple nine-step fat bird that looks like a blue jay or could be a cardinal or finch if colored differently. Another simple one that could be colored however you like is from How to Draw for Kids.

How to Draw Easy has another cute (and easy) little bird that won’t be hard for kids to draw.

I Heart Crafty Things has instructions for drawing a hummingbird and a cardinal, as well as her take on a pigeon. They’re all relatively easy but the hummingbird might be a little trickier for younger kids. (Incidentally, I Heart Crafty Things has a ton of drawing tutorials if you or your kids would like to learn how to draw things other than birds.)

This little stack of birds form Art Projects for Kids is super cute and simple to draw. If you want to make it even easier for littles, there’s a coloring page version, too. Color this one in with crayons or use watercolors for a different look.

If you want more doodle-like birds, check out the collection of 13 easy bird drawings at Shihori Obata. You can use these prompts directly or let them inspire you to make your own fun and cute bird drawings.

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Bus Learning Activities

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Sun Activities for Kids

With summer coming soon in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s a fun time to incorporate activities and crafts with a sunny theme. Take some time to learn about the sun (this post from National Geographic Kids is a good one) and then do some sun activities.

Sun prints are a classic summer activity, and there are lots of ways to do them, from placing objects on construction paper (like in this craft from MomBrite) or by using sun print paper (aka cyanotype paper).

Practice threading, counting, color sorting and other skills with this easy sun threading activity from Taming Little Monsters.

Lessons 4 Little Ones has a great blog post full of ideas for science experiments using the sun, such as melting crayons, looking at shadows, making a sun dial and trying a solar oven. Printables to go with the lessons are available for purchase or you can just talk through the students’ hypotheses about what will happen and draw or otherwise record the results.

This updraft tower from Almost Unschoolers is a cool way to illustrate that the heat of the sun causes an updraft, which makes the pinwheel spin. This is a good one to do inside near a sunny window so you don’t have wind spinning the pinwheel instead.

You’ll want to get out in the sun to try this experiment form Life with Moore Babies to see what kinds of things the sun can melt. Using different kinds of sweets you can see how the sun melts things by itself and how you can concentrate the power of the sun with a magnifying glass.

Playing with shadows is fun for kids of all ages, and you can track a shadow through the day with this experiment from Science Sparks. If you’re working with multiple kids they can each choose an object to shadow (ha!) and at the end of the day you can see how different their shadows looked.

And of course you’ll want to make a sun themed suncatcher craft, right? This one from Fox Farm Home uses all the pretty flowers you collect on your nature walk and puts them in a sun-shaped frame.

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