Stellaluna Diorama and Mini Unit Study
Stellaluna by Janell Cannon was published in 1993. I was four at the time, and it would become one of my favorite childhood books! These days, I love that I get to share Stellaluna with my children. I’m sure that this story about self-discovery, with its loveable little protagonist, will continue to resonate with children for many generations to come.
Today, we’re celebrating this tale by sharing how you can make a Stellaluna-inspired diorama in your homeschool. This post will share a free template you can use, as well as step-by-step and video instructions to recreate an iconic scene from the book! Before we get into the diorama, we’ll also share other educational ideas you can use to expand your enjoyment of this book into a mini unit study that older learners can enjoy doing with younger siblings!
We hope your family enjoys this Stellaluna Diorama and Mini Unit Study!
The Story of Stellaluna
Whether you’re new to the tale, or it’s just been a while, let me refresh your memory on the details of this story before diving into our Stellaluna Diorama and Mini Unit Study.
Stellaluna is the story of a young fruit bat who, after being separated from her mother, is adopted by a family of birds. As she grows, Stellaluna tries her very best to adapt to the birds’ way of life. However, she always feels out of place. After all, Stellaluna is a bat. It’s not natural for her to sleep at night, fly during the day, or eat bugs instead of fruit! Eventually, she reunites with her bat family and learns to appreciate both her own special differences, as well as the bonds of friendship she formed with the birds.
To me, this story always felt like what I’d wanted The Ugly Duckling to be. While it has some similar themes to the earlier story by Hans Christian Anderson, it also shows that everyone has different strengths and that we can be friends with those who are different than us!
Why Make a Stellaluna Diorama?
In honor of this beautiful story, we want to share how you can create a Stellaluna diorama in your homeschool! This hands-on activity helps bring the story to life by allowing children to visually represent a key scene from the book: Stellaluna sleeping upside down while her bird friends perch on a branch above!
We love literature-based dioramas here at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers. They are an excellent way for kids to connect with stories through creativity and hands-on, active learning. Creating dioramas also encourages teamwork, builds fine motor skills, and offers a multi-sensory learning experience. The experience of creating a lit-based diorama also creates positive, lifelong memories for children that they will then associate with learning and reading!
If you have a large family, dioramas also allow older children to participate in projects which feature a book for or topic for younger ones (like Stellaluna). It makes for a fun group effort! But whether children are crafting with you, or with siblings, dioramas bring books to life in a tangible way and can be proudly displayed as a keepsake of their learning.
This post is part of an ongoing literary + diorama series for children! If you love hands-on learning like this, be sure to also see our similar posts for The Gruffalo and The Cat in the Hat!
Ways to Take This Study Further at Home with Learners of All Ages
Before we dive into crafting your Stellaluna diorama, here are a few additional activities to enhance your mini unit study and deepen your family’s connection with the story, especially if you want some extra resources to bring in older/middle grade students to your study of Stellaluna!
Read Together as a Family and Discuss Themes
The best way to get started, of course, is reading Stellaluna aloud together and discussing Stellaluna’s experiences with her bat and bird families. Encourage each family member to reflect on what it means to appreciate differences and how they relate to the characters’ journeys. What is something that makes each person in your family unique, or different? Why should we appreciate the differences between people? Have any of your children ever felt out of place in a particular setting? How did he or she cope with that?
Hands-On Art:
Have your kids create art that reflects their experience of the story. This will make even more connections between creative thinking, memory, and reading! A few ideas include:
- Making bats or birds out of paper (origami!)
- Using items to design their own bird nests.
- Drawing or painting a favorite scene from the story.
Study Nocturnal Animals
Expand your children’s learning experience by exploring nocturnal animals like bats. Here are a few ideas, depending on your child.
- Study the differences between nocturnal and diurnal creatures.
- Create a Venn diagram of bats and birds.
- Take a nighttime nature walk to listen for and observe what comes alive at night!
- Try a “nighttime nature journal!
Bat and Bird-Themed Snacks:
Have some fun with themed snacks. (Everyone loves snacks!) Here are a few delicious ways to enhance your study of Stellaluna.
- Arrange a fruit platter to represent Stellaluna’s favorite foods and gummy worms or bug-shaped treats to represent the birds’ diet.
- Create edible nests out of Chinese noodles, melted butterscotch, and M&Ms. Another way to make edible nests is by following a recipe for rice krispies treats, then molding the treats in the shape of nests and filling them with candy-covered almonds.
- Get bat and/or bird-shaped cookie cutters and make some roll-out sugar cookies shaped like characters from the book!
Create Opportunities for Older Learners:
- Compare and Contrast Writing:
Ask older children to write an essay comparing Stellaluna’s experiences with the birds to her life as a bat. What are the similarities and differences in behavior between these two animals, and how do we see this in the story through Stellaluna’s experiences? This activity promotes critical thinking and story analysis. - Exploring Themes of Friendship and Acceptance:
Engage your older kids in discussions about the importance of accepting differences. Have them write an essay on how Stellaluna learns to be herself, while still valuing the friendships she made with the birds. - Research Nocturnal Animals:
Challenge older children to research nocturnal animals, focusing on bats and their importance to ecosystems. They can create a presentation or write a report on what they’ve learned!
By including these activities in your Stellaluna Diorama and Mini Unit Study, you can create hands-on learning experiences for your entire family. And of course, you can also use the Stellaluna Diorama with learners of all ages! The instructions are below!
The Stellaluna Diorama Project
Now, here are those step-by-steps you can use to create a Stellaluna diorama in your homeschool! After these written steps and accompanying images, you will also find some short videos to assist you in your project!
List of Supplies
Stellaluna Diorama Instructions
Scene Creation
We decided to combine two pages from Stellaluna to create our diorama, featuring the three birds, Stellaluna, the moon, and the mango tree. We’ve simplified the scene to make it easier to trace, cut out, and assemble.
Step 1
Measure and cut out paper to cover the inside of the box. For the back, top, left, and right sides, we used dark blue paper, and for the bottom, we used green paper.
Step 2
Choose colored cardstock for the template patterns. Use a pencil to trace the templates and cut them out. The templates include patterns for: the moon, two trees, mangoes, birds, and two layers of bushes (one further into the box, and one more towards the front).
Step 3
Attach the leaf cutouts to the mangoes using glue or a gluestick.
Step 4
Glue the mangoes onto a tree branch.
Step 5
Attach the wing cutouts to the bird shapes.
Step 6
Use Sharpies to draw eyes and beaks on the paper birds. Then glue the birds onto a branch of another tree.
Step 7
Once your birds are attached, you can also glue on the rest of the leaves (as shown in the image above!)
Step 8 (optional)
You can use crayons or Sharpies to add texture and details to the trees! If you love to study nature with your children, you could look up some pictures and facts about mango trees.
Follow our video tutorial to see how to assemble the papercraft items inside the diorama box. Videos to follow!
Clay Stellaluna Instructions
Step 1
Measure out the amount of clay needed for Stellaluna’s head and body. Knead the clay until smooth and shape it into a sphere. You can pinch a part of the sphere slightly to make a pointy nose. Next, you’ll form the body by making a larger, more oval shape.
Step 2
Attach the head to the body. Then use a lighter shade of clay to make the wings.
Step 3
Wrap one wing around half of the body.
Step 4
Wrap the second wing around the other half of the body. Attach the clay ears to the head. You can see we’ve used two shades here for the ears to make them more dimensional! In this photo, we also had also started on the eyes but changed them a bit later. Don’t worry about adding those yet unless you just want to!
Step 5
Add the clay legs.
Step 6
Attach the eyes, nose, and small blush spots to the face. You have several options for how these parts will look! I love the “blushy” cheeks for Stellaluna. Even though we don’t usually think of bats as having rosy cheeks, they fit this character who is shy and constantly embarrassed throughout the story!
Step 7
For the eyes, you can make two larger, white circles followed by two smaller, black circles, as shown below. You could also just do two small, black circles. You can even use googly eyes instead, if that’s your preference! Be creative and make it yours.
Step 8
Use a clay knife to make a 2 cm deep slit at the bottom of the clay bat. You can insert the cardstock tree branch into this slit to attach the bat. Press the clay to either side of the cardstock to help it stay!
This completes your Stellaluna Diorama! As you follow these instructions, have fun and find ways to make this project your own!
We hope your family has a wonderful time doing some of these interactive, hands-on activities while studying Stellaluna! This is a beautiful little story that offers much to inspire further learning and discussion. If you love hands-on literature for littles, be sure to also check out our Diorama + Mini Unit study posts for The Cat and the Hat and the Gruffalo! Also, comment below to let us know if you have any more cool, hands-on ideas inspired by this book!