How to craft a suitable home for wild ducks and their young...

Plants that grow near ponds and duck-egg nests are just a few hand-crafted toys your child or 
young student can learn to make for this environmentally inspired project.

        Students can assemble a miniature pond environment for miniature toy ducks. Below are some questions that they can learn the answers to while they craft:

• What do wild ducks eat? They eat amphibians, small fish, duck weed, millet, etc... many things that live in healthy pond environments. What ducks eat.
• How do wild ducks prepare a nest for their eggs? Wild ducks often make their nests on the ground near or in wetlands or ponds. They look for a spot of raised mud that will support a nest made from reeds inside the tall grass so that their babies will be camouflaged. See the family of ducks that nested in the Shelties pond here.

These little nature inspired toys can be moved
to any place on our small diorama.

Supply List:

• Sculpey
• masking tape
• pale blue, tan, brown acrylic paints
• straw or paper grass 
• paper mache pulp
• recycled paper egg carton

Step-by-Step Instructions for Crafting A Duck Nest:

1. Cut individual egg carton cups apart. Clean up the edges a bit with scissors.
2. Prepare the paper mache pulp according to the directions on the package. Make only a couple of tablespoons of the material.
3. Fill the cups a bit smoothing out the inside sides with the paper pulp. Let dry.
4. Glue the straw or paper grass to the outside edges of the pretend nests. Let dry.
5. Fill the interior with a few natural looking feathers.
6. Sculpt tiny duck eggs from oven-bake clay. Paint these pale blue for duck's eggs. Put these in your paper-mache nests for the mamma ducks.

Left, the paper mache pulp is pressed inside the recycled egg cup. Right, see the finished duck
nests filled to the brim with eggs. Go here to see more eggs; these are eggs that hens lay.