Meet the Parrot Tico Tango!

For this week's after-school story time craft session, I developed this super fun and colorful craft based on a classic Barefoot singalong book - The Parrot Tico Tango.  For some reason I hadn't paid much attention to this book before I decided to do this craft, but now Tico Tango has become one of my very favorite Barefoot characters!

Tico Tango is a greedy parrot who flies around the rainforest snatching fruit from his friends - until he tries to grab one piece of fruit too many and learns an important lesson in sharing.

The book has a great rhyme that made it easy to read to the kids, and the colorful illustrations held their attention so well.  Then we listened to the singalong on the CD, sung by Brian Amador, and everyone was entranced - including the after-school teacher!

The parrot Tico Tango 

Had a round, yellow mango, 

But it wasn't quite as yellow 

As the lemon of Marcello.  

And Tico Tango knew 

That he had to have it too, 

So he took it! 

Creating Tico Tango wasn't as hard as you might think...I started by tracing around a salad plate on a piece of red card stock and then cutting it out.  I cut the circle in half, then also cut in half the end pieces left over after I cut the circle out.  One half circle became Tico Tango's body, and the two halves of one left-over end piece became a set of wings.

I glued the pieces down to some green construction paper - I know this doesn't look very much like a parrot, but I just wanted a red background with a general bird shape to attach the feathers to...

I used masking tape in different colors to attach the feathers - I figured tape would work better than glue, and the tape colors helped create the colorful look of a parrot.  Add a googly eye, two purple half circles for a mouth, and meet The Parrot Tico Tango:

But then came the real test...could the four year olds and five year olds handle it?  I was a little worried that this craft would be too complex for them, but they did great!

I think this was my favorite craft activity so far!  Let me know what you think...