Whoo loves owls? We do! I just planned an owl-themed birthday party for my daughter, and had so much fun with all of the owl ideas. Many of the ideas I found would be great as part of an owl unit in your speech therapy room! I even have a few curricular-based activities and visuals to share. Read and click for tons of owl ideas, resources and activities!
Want to start your owl-theme with a book? Here are some Owl-themed tales that can be used in an owl unit or as a book study feature for a single lesson. Click on the image below to see a HUGE list of owl books available for children:
An owl craft activity can be a great follow-up to an owl-themed book. How about an owl-mask? Below are some pictures of the owl masks I made using brown cardstock and paper, and ribbon. I cut out circles using fancy scissors, and used a circle paper punch for the eye cut-outs (but you could trace a circle and cut out by hand, if you’d rather.) Then just use a hole punch and ribbon for the mask ties. I hand-drew my template, but there are lots of templates online here.
Here’s my birthday girl in her mask:
And here is the assortment, ready for her party:
We also had owl goodie bags — wouldn’t these be cute as gifts for students or to use as category or attribute sorting bags, parts-of-speech bags or (stuffed with tissue paper) used as story characters? Just add circle eyes, fold over top of brown or colored bags, and staple! I added text to the back of ours as a “thank you” message to guests, but you could customize the owl with your own text or writing. Click on the picture to download the template I made:
I often use “cooking” as an activity to reinforce a theme. How cute are these owl cupcakes? Just use oreos for the eyes (I replaced the creme filling in ours with pink fondant cutouts, which is very easy to do, but you could leave the oreo filling on yours if you wanted to keep things simple.) Add Junior Mint eyeballs, a triangle nose (mine are made from candy orange slices) and oreo wafer pieces for the eyebrows. You could make a visual recipe in Boardmaker, focusing on sequential directions and descriptive word concepts. And then students get to eat their creations!
We also made a fun, Mama Owl cake, inspired by this cupcake-only version. Our Mama Owl was cut out of a large 1/2 sheet cake, with the cut-out remnants used to create the nest below. We used oreos, fondant cutouts, peach rings and junior mints for the eyes, candy orange slices for the nose and toes, chocolate wafers, sprinkles and chocolate chips for the feathers and brown sugar and pretzel rods for the nesting materials. This cake could be used with a large group as a celebration of some sort or as an Owl Unit finale…too cute not to share!
Owls are fascinating creatures, really. An owl unit is the perfect way to study these animals and their unique attributes. Here is a vocabulary sheet to use for an owl unit introduction or as a word bank for worksheets or related activities. Just click on the link for a free, downloadable copy:
Here are a few more links to help you plan your Creature Feature Unit starring Owls:
- Enchanted Learning
- Mrs. Jump’s Class (lots of cute ideas on this education blog!)
- ABC Teach – free owl printables
- Mrs. Jackson’s Class – TONS of links to owl resources
- Brighton Park – nice Homeschooling blog with ideas for owl crafts and activities
- Teaching Happily Ever After – teaching blog, features an idea for “nocturnal animals” craft
- Ideas4Kids – Owl activities and crafts for kids
How about some Owl images for your theme unit? You could use Google images, or check out this site for a database of images by owl species – The Owl Pages.
I hope you have fun with this owl theme! Let me know what ideas you use and how things worked for you and your students. Enjoy!
2 thoughts on “Creature Feature –All About Owls!!”