After reading the delightful book Owl Babies by Martin Waddell, we were inspired to paint our very own owl babies…
You can also count with owls!
Owl Babies is a charming story of three young owls who awake in the night to find that their mother is not in their nest. The three owl babies comfort each other as they fret over when their mama will return. We so loved the beautiful owls in our story that we were inspired to create our own…
Creating our owls was really quite simple. The children used brown paint to create a tree branch (like in our book) for their baby owls to sit on…
Although the branch in our book sits horizontal, one child decided to think outside the box and created vertical branches rather than horizontal. Brilliant!…
To make the owls, the children loaded up their sponges with white paint and pressed the sponges onto their paper, creating a white, bubbly owl baby’s body and head…
The fun thing about using the scrubby sponge is that the sponge creates a really unique texture. When pressed onto the paper, the paint is bubbly, giving the owl babies a nice fluffy texture, similar to the pictures in the book…
Some of our student’s only chose to make one owl baby while others chose to make all three like in the book. Some of the children even named their owl babies (asking us to remind them what the names of the owls were in the book)…
When the paintings were complete, the most darling collection of owl babies were hung up on our walls to watch over our classroom at night…
One child, who often prefers to explore our other centers over the art center, was excited to show off his owl babies to his dad…
Owl Babies is a book that inspired new interest in the painting process, we were able to take a look at the bubbles or texture in our paint and recall the names of the owls in our story…
Available on Amazon
Links to grow on: 
Adorable owls by Happy Hooligans
Owl shapes by Little Page Turners
Nocturnal animals storytime by RovingFiddlehead KidLit
I love these! The googly eyes just make the craft, too.
Another book to add to this theme might be Owl Moon.
Oh my goodness, these are just too darn cute, Courtney! I love the texture that the sponges give to the paint! Thanks for the great idea! And thanks for including the link to our Adorable Owls too! 🙂
You’re welcome, Jackie! Thanks for the kind words. 🙂
How adorably fun! My 2 yo grand daughter saw the pictures. After nap, we will have to make our own version.
I like the fact that you wrote about some of children choosing to make the owl babies and not the branch. Good for you. It is important to point that I , I feel, so parents doing this at home know that it is OK to choose. I always, “It is artist privilege.”
Great effective idea! I am about to read Owl Babies to my three year old classes…such a beautiful book that helps children understand separation from mum and dad. We usually create feathery little masses to hang on a branch in our room but will try your printing technique this year instead.
These are so absolutely adorable!
I love that book and I love the paintings that the children made inspired by it. A lovely idea! Pinned 🙂
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