Egg Chicken

What You Need:

• Brown eggs
• 2-inch safety pin or needle
• Egg carton
• Straightened paper clip
• Ear syringe or eyedropper (optional but nice)
• Clean bowl
• Glue
• Scissors
• Orange felt or orange construction paper
• Red felt or red construction paper
• Black permanent marker
• Brown construction paper

What You Do:

1. To make this a long lasting craft, we suggest blowing out the contents of the egg. First, have your child put the egg in an empty egg carton.
2. Help her open the two-inch safety pin and poke a tiny hole in the top of the egg.
3. Flip the egg over and make a hole in the other side.
4. Have your child take the straightened paper clip and stick it inside one of the holes. 
5. Ask your child to wiggle the paper clip around to break up the egg yolk. Tell her she is making a scrambled egg inside the shell to make the contents of the egg easier to blow out.  
6. Have her clean the outside of the egg.
7. Position the egg over the clean bowl.
8. Have your child place her mouth over one of the holes and blow. The scrambled egg should exit out the other hole. If it doesn’t, make the holes slightly bigger. You can save the blown out egg for the next morning’s scrambled eggs.
9. Instead of blowing the egg contents out, if you have an ear syringe or eyedropper, squeeze it and place it over one of the holes. As it reopens, it should fill with scrambled egg. Squeeze extracted egg into bowl, and repeat until egg is empty.
10. Rinse out your blown out egg. Let dry.
11. Next, have your child make feet for her chicken. Make two felt trapezoids that have a half-inch top, a 1-inch base, and sides that are 1 ¼ inches .
12. Cut out two triangles from the 1-inch side, creating three toes.
13. Glue the feet on the bottom of the egg. Position the feet so the egg can stand freely. Add more felt if necessary. Let dry.
14. Have your child cut two half-inch tall triangles from the orange felt.
15. Ask your child to glue the two triangles on top of each other, leaving the last quarter of an inch open to suggest an open beak. Let dry.
16. For the comb, assist your child in cutting out a half-inch square from the red felt. Then ask her to cut out a small triangle from one of the sides to give the comb two prongs.
17. Glue the comb on the top of the chicken’s head, ideally covering the hole you made to blow out the egg.
18. Help your child glue the beak about a third of the way down the egg. Let dry.
19. Have your child draw on the chicken's eyes.
20. Ask your child to draw and cut out 2 wings that are about 2 inches long from the brown construction paper.
21. Glue the wings on the sides of the egg so they're at about the same height as the eyes. 

Your child can make a bunch of chickens if she wants. Some could be made from white eggs. Baby chicks could be made by dying white eggs yellow first, eliminating the comb, and making the wings tiny. If your child wants to venture out of the bird world, the brown eggs in particular make great bunnies, cats, mice, and bears. The only limit is how many scrambled eggs your family is willing to eat!