Spring is here, and with it comes nesting birds and green things pushing up through the earth. Bring a bit of the fresh, new season indoors with Painted Wooden Eggs, a spring nature craft for kids.

Painted Wooden Eggs

Bird’s nests and eggs are incredibly fascinating. Did you know that robins weave a tidy nest of grasses, twigs, and mud, whereas house sparrows are messy birds that just stuff grass, weed, twigs, paper, and trash into a hole? Each bird is so different!

We painted our mini wooden eggs to look just like bird’s eggs. Here are some ideas:

• American Robin: turquoise eggs
• House Sparrow: white eggs with brown speckles
• Blue Jay: green eggs with brown spots
• American Goldfinch: blue-white eggs
• Red-winged Blackbird: blue-green with purple spots and streaks
• Black-capped Chickadee: white eggs with tan speckles
• Downy Woodpecker: pure white eggs

In case you were wondering, the bright yellow egg is a Sun Dragon Egg and the grey egg is a Cyborg Dragon Egg. (This happens, sometimes, when crafting with boys!)

To create streaked eggs, dip a paintbrush into acrylic paint and lightly tap it in the air over the egg. We speckled eggs the same way, but used much less paint.

The eggs we made together—bird and dragon—are displayed inside a beautiful wooden bowl, handmade by my Dad. The boys dump them out for imaginative play. As I type, they are currently being buried in kinetic sand by my youngest.