Feathers in Art

Humans have a long tradition of making art inspired by birds and feathers. We discussed why and how Native Americans have used feathers in their art and so have the Aztec, Mayas, and Incas. I showed students their work. We discussed the interesting story of Moctezuma's copilli (headdress).

Since it's really a Spanish class, we only have a few minutes to do art, so I use a lot of templates. I create about 10 templates of  feathers for students to trade on a piece of card stock and design their own feather bookmark. This year, because I have many more students, I only made one time of feather template. The students seem to love them just the same and the designs all come out different.

Terms:

Social Studies: Aztec, Maya, Inca, Mesoamerican, explorers

Art: Pattern, artist licence