Easy costume: make an owl dress up

If you are looking for Book Week ideas or Halloween costume ideas, how about this cute but simple owl costume? If you're making it for Book Week, it's from Owl Babies by Martin Waddelll and Patrick Benson. For Halloween, practise your "hoo hoo" for a scary night owl!

What you need:

• 1m x 1m piece of brown felt or fabric (even an old blanket will do)
• a brown beanie
• small piece of white card
• glue
• 20cm of elastic
• black marker pen
• 4 x safety pins
• scissors

Number of players:

Activity:

Fold the piece of brown felt in two. Draw a wing shape onto the top layer (see video) and then cut out both pieces at once. Now you have two wings.

To make owl's eyes, use the white card and black marker pen to draw two big owl eyes. Cut them out.

Stick the two eyes to the beanie.

Use a leftover scrap of felt (or you could use white card and colour it orange) to make the owl's beak. Staple the length of elastic to the beak.

Put it together by using safety pins to attach the wings to your child's clothing (see video) and adding the beanie and beak.

(Works best if your child wears brown as well, but don't be too bothered about this, the video shows a perfectly acceptable pink owl.)