Bird Week Day One - eating like birds
For the second day of our bird week we learned all about bird nests. We had three seperate activities that we did plus a book that we read.
The day started off with the first step to our bird nest craft project. Found this project on Pinterest but you can see at Crunchy and Green.
We started out by painting the top part of our plate blue and the bottom part brown to be the background for our nest.
Our friend Peyton was with us all day today and I had a lot to live up to compared to his mom (who is MY daughter's preschool teacher!). But I think he had a good time!
Once we got the painting done we headed out on a walk to look for bird nests, learn what they were made of, talk about how birds build them and then collect some things so we could build our own.
Of course along the way we stopped at interesting spots for some fun outdoor play!
The creek down the street from our house was the perfect little stop. We threw rocks and sticks in the water to see what would sink and what would float. Then I sat them down and we talked about why this would be a great place for birds to live. Where would they get food? Where would they get water? What do they see that would provide places for the birds to live? Lots of great learning happen on the "fun" stop too.
When we got back to our house I got things set up for bird nest building in the back yard.
Each kid got their own piece of cardboard to build on (which also makes it easier for them to move the bird nest after building if they want to). They had their bag of building materials that they collected on the walk (grass, small sticks, weeds, flowers, etc.). And then I had a big pot of mud (the pot is an old one from my kitchen that Sam uses in her mud kitchen).
We mixed up the mud and got to work building.
We took a big pile of mud and put it on each kid's cardboard. Then I told them to grab some of the grass to mix in with the mud. Once they got it mixed up I told them to start shaping it into a bowl-type shape, like the bird nests we saw on the walk.
The nests may not have turned out perfect but it was so fun to see them get right in the mud and at least trying to build like birds.
Since they were all muddy we had some sprinkler/hose play to get them clean. I cleaned up the mud mess and then worked on lunch while they played!
After lunch we finished our crafting project from earlier in the morning.
They glued more of their collected grass and sticks to the brown part of the plate.
Then after the nests were complete I had egg stickers for them to put in the nests (Crunchy and Green made these adorable little blue birds with feathers for in the nest but I just wasn't that on top of my game and had these egg stickers so I went for the easy route!).
They were very proud of the nests that they made!
What a day!
After the crafting we read one of our favorite bird books "In the Nest" by Anna Milbourne.
I think the whole day went really well and all the activities fit together perfectly. We had crafting, outdoor play, exercise, learning and reading!!
And now I am exhausted!
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The Nitty Gritty!
I think this is already a long enough post! HA!
BUT I did want to say that it was really fun to see Sam doing activities along side another three year old. They talked about everything while they were playing and learning. They asked each other questions, compared what they were doing and challenged each other. If one was still interested in an activity they would both keep going and stay focused a bit longer. I think this really helped keep Sam focused on what she was doing longer since she normally has a very short attention span for almost anything!
