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I am creating a felt animal for my son for every letter of the alphabet in a new series: ABC Animals in Felt!

This week has been devoted to the letter U. Uu poses some problems, as there aren’t too many animals that begin with the letter U. At first, I really didn’t want to do an umbrella bird (they are really, really ugly.)

Gross, right?

But I gave my son a choice between an umbrella bird, an urchin, and an urial (a ram-like animal). And alas, he chose the ugly umbrella bird :) This turned out to be a challenge for me, what with its “wattle” (similar to a turkey?) and funny “crown,” but I am so happy and proud of how it turned out!

All you need to make a Felt Umbrella Bird is:

felt: black, brown, red (or you can use paper!)
two black buttons
cotton balls
hot glue gun (or Elmer’s if you’re just using colored paper)
amazing Fiskar scissors (if you’re going to work with felt at all, you have to check these scissors out!)

** This craft uses a hot glue gun — please keep out of the reach of children — these are for adult use only!!

This is the only way this makes sense to me. I cut the free printable (found below) into pieces. Then, I assemble all of my felt pieces — I cut two each of the body, wattle, beak, and crown. The feathers on the red wattle and the feet are a little tricky, so just eyeball it!

Now glue your red wattle, black crown, and beak together. Then add your cotton balls and carefully hot glue them onto the black body!

Now just glue the second black body on top, with more cotton balls. And the black buttons for eyes on either side!

I’ve got to admit, I never thought an umbrella bird could be cute, but this one is :) I love how this turned out — minus the hot glue on the black — not very forgiving, but this is for my three year old and he doesn’t notice :)

My son absolutely loves his umbrella bird.

The felt umbrella bird and felt turtle now live together in their nest in John’s bedroom :)

I made a template, and a coloring page, for you to make your own umbrella bird! Can you believe I drew this myself (using the above umbrella bird as my guide)!? (I’m not an illustrator ha.)

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You can download the Umbrella Bird printable here!

Book Extension

If you’re looking for a wonderful book to read with this activity, the letter Uu book from AlphaTales is all about the Umbrella Bird: Umbrellabird’s Umbrella! This looks super cute.