Angry Birds - Large and In Charge

I recently did an Angry Birds program with my Middle Matters group (kids grades 6-8) that went pretty well. We are still looking for the right time to offer programming but right now it is Fridays at 4:30 advertised as a homework break. Bad news is, it's football season so...

Before I go into what I did, please know that I borrow liberally from other librarians who have graciously shared their ideas on the internet. So, thank you, if you see your ideas splashed across my blog.

I set up several stations for the kiddos to choose from. The first was Angry Birds Body Parts, think of the game Cootie but with Angry Bird parts instead. I wasn't sure about this one but the kids really got into it.

Roll the dice. Add the piece that corresponds with your roll. If you roll a six you must remove a piece of your bird. First one to have a complete Angry Bird wins.

    1.   Body

    2.   Beak

    3.   Eye (2)

    4.   Head Feathers

    5.   Tail

    6.    Remove a body part

Next there were Papercraft. These can be found all over the internet but the ones I used were by Little Plastic Man.

These were pretty tough to put together but everyone made one or two of them. I let them take the patterns for the others so they could make them at home.

Then came the cute craft - pom pom birds and pigs.

Love the eyebrows

Pom poms were made by wrapping yarn around fingers many, many, many times, then tying a knot around the middle making loops on both sides of the center tie. The loops were then cut, fluffed, and trimmed until the desired roundness and size was achieved. I supplied small squares of paper to cut beaks, crowns, and noses from, plus the googly eyes - because all projects are better with googly eyes.

We had tattoos available and a snack of Angry Bird Droppings, which made me smile more than the kids but I forgive their lack of sophisticated humor. They're young.

Of course you can't have Angry Birds - Large and in charge without having life-sized angry birds to play. I spent several weeks gathering boxes of various sizes, wrapping them in brown paper and drawing "wood grain" on them for authenticity. Realism is key (snerk)

At this point I need to stop and say that I had help with the wrapping and wood graining. Okay, I didn't do a lick of it. I was fortunate enough to have a wonderful intern this summer who was willing to take on any assigned task.


I purchased several kickballs and tried to get the right colors but blue didn't come in the right size so I used green. Honestly, the kids didn't even notice they were having too much fun. I looked on the internet for templates but to be frank I didn't really like the ones I found so I made my own. They are included at the end of the blog. I tried taping the bird faces to the balls but it didn't stick very well so I tried glue dots. Those worked for the first few launches but fell off soon thereafter. Again, the kids didn't care, in fact they thought it was funny, so there you go with their sense of humor.

The taped faces came off pretty quickly

From one blog I got the idea to lob the birds at the pigs by using a towel but I wanted to make it as Angry Birds authentic as possible - remember realism is key - without actually using a slingshot so I brought a black, fleece scarf from home and made them work together to figure out how to get the bird to fly to the right place. It took a bit of coordination and a lot of trial and error but they managed.

Green ballons with Pig faces drawn on them completed the game. The kids had great fun knocking things down and building in new configurations trying to make it harder to get to the pigs. Never let anyone tell you that they are too old to build with blocks.

Hope you have as much fun in your Angry Birds program as I had in mine.