Flamingo Friday: Ping Pong Ball Flamingos & Species

We did a fun craft with ping pong balls. I found a pack of colored ping pong balls for $1 somewhere and saw the bright pink and though flamingo. Yes, I have flamingo on my brain too much lately. We finally found some time to try to make them. (I think the yellow and green balls may become other types of birds in the future.)

We started by choosing a color for the legs and I cut a pink pipe cleaner in half for the necks. We first glued on the leg pipe cleaner, but then wanted to wrap the neck pipe cleaner under it so we ended up regluing. We curled the ends of the legs to be the feet. On the other end of the neck we wrapped around a pink pom pom and attached a piece of pipe cleaner to be the beak. We wrapped it into the neck pipe cleaner and twisted it to form the beak. We used a marker to add the black (well I couldn't find the black marker, so I used brown) on the ends. Then we let the glue dry.

After the glue dried we glued on feathers to cover the leg pipe cleaner going around the ball and to form the tail and wings. It only took two feathers on each side.

After last week's post about Andean flamingos, I made mine with yellow legs like the Andean flamingo. I also thought I would share a bit about the species of the flamingo. There are six recognized species: 

• Greater Flamingo
• Caribbean Flamingo
• Chilean Flamingo
• Lesser Flamingo
• Andean Flamingo
• Jame's Flamingo

The greater and lesser flamingos live in Africa, Asia and Southern Europe. The others live in South America, Mexico and the Caribbean.(Source) I will share more about each species another time, but of course we have already looked at the Andean flamingo.

The greater and lesser flamingos are named for their sizes. The Jame's flamingo is named for the person who "discovered" the species and the others are named for one of the places they live.

So that is our little flamingo craft and lesson!! Enjoy!! And come back to share and be inspired at Sharing Saturday!!