Winter break + snow day = a very long time away from nature school. The kids will be studying the Northern Cardinal when they finally return and had homework over the holidays: choose either the male or female to study and make an ornament for the class tree. My daughter chose the female, which we learned is not the brilliantly red colored bird usually depicted as the cardinal.
I let her do this mostly by herself. I printed the template on cardstock and she cut out the pieces, colored them and glued them together. I helped her pry them apart so we could add the top feathers, legs and string and then we re-glued them together.
This was another exercise in letting go for me. I resisted trimming the blue template lines that are peeking out of the edges and adding more brown feathers. When I suggested a little more brown, she said the cardinal is “a little bit snowy.”
pattern template: I downloaded Purl Soho’s Simple Sewn Bird Ornament pattern for this project. Since we used paper and didn’t need a seam allowance, I just used the interface template. I printed the original and a mirror image for the other side. Paper, string, raffia all from the stash.
