Greening Sam and Avery

butterfly preschool program

I scrapbooked tonight! Not for my family or my own kids but for a butterfly. I am creating a preschool butterfly program that involves a puppet and a butterfly baby book! The puppet, named Molly, will walk the kids through her life by sharing her baby book, her family scrap book, with the kids. I am super excited to do this program and will get to test it out on Thursday!

To go along with this lesson I also found this great little finger play about the life cycle of butterflies that I think will be a great wrap up to the lesson. Thanks Amy, at Child Central Station, for sharing this one with me!

Any other great butterfly ideas? Share them with me!!

preschool bird lesson

Want to teach preschoolers about the body parts of birds? Try dressing up like one!

Here are some ways you can dress up like bird to teach kids the parts of a bird's body and how even though all birds have the same body parts they can look very different!

Beaks (Heron, Eagle, Cardinal, Mallard Duck)

 

Beaks made with sturdy wire, felt, elastic cord and hot glue. I shaped the wire first to look like the beak and then wrapped it with felt. The elastic cord is used to hold the beak onto a teacher or child's face. 

Feet (Heron, Eagle)

Feet made with sturdy wire, felt, hot glue and old socks. I shaped the wire first to look like feet and then wrapped them with felt. I did have to sew the feet to the socks with a few stitches. The socks were old socks of my husband's. I cut the ankle and tow off the sock so that they could easily be pulled on over an adult or child's shoe. 

Wings (Eagle, Cardinal)

Wings made with cardboard, paint, hot glue, feathers, elastic cord and fabric. The large eagle wing is made to scale from painted cardboard. I then attached an elastic cord to the underneath as a strap for an arm and added a felt handle to the tip. The cardinal wing is also made to scale from fabric wrapped cardboard. I then glued feathers on and an elastic cord on the underneath as a strap for an arm.

Tail Feathers (Eagle, Cardinal)

Tail feathers were made with cardboard, feathers, string and hot glue. I simply cut out the cardboard and glued on the feathers. I then attached a long piece of string to the back so that the tail could be attached. 

Owl Eyes

Owl eyes were made with a child's pair of sunglasses with the lenses popped out, cardboard tubes (toilet paper tubes), felt and hot glue. I glued the tubes to the glasses then surrounded the glasses with felt so that there was no peripheral vision. Even though these are for owls and not an eagle or cardinal I still made these and brought them with. They are a super unique feature of owls and a very fun item for kids to try on. 

I have all the necessary parts to dress up like an eagle and a cardinal. These are two great birds to dress up like because all their body parts are called the same thing (where a duck's beak is called a bill) but they look very different. They are also two birds that preschoolers are likely to be very familiar with. 

What could be a more fun way to teach about bird body parts than dressing up the kid's preschool teacher up like a bird? Super fun! And such a great way to talk about bird body parts!!

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The Nitty Gritty!

This is a lesson that I designed and recently taught at my daughter's school. I started the lesson out by showing the kids pictures of birds and asking them to tell me what body parts make a bird special. We listed out the five main parts of a bird (beak, feet, wings, feathers, tails) and talked about each one (what the bird uses it for and any other special features that body part may have). Then I asked them if all birds look the same; if they all have the same body parts why don't they all look the same? Then I said we had better see just how different birds really look by comparing two birds more closely. Then their preschool teachers were brought in and we dressed them up one body part at a time. I had the students list the body parts and then we added them to the teacher. We talked again about what each body part does and how it looks different from the same body part on the other bird.  After the teachers were all dressed up I let the kids have some time to try on the bird parts and dress up like a bird themselves. 

The kids LOVED this lesson! We had so much fun with this one that I just had to share it.  

a great weekend

We skied.

I taught survival skills. We hiked. I shared some great snow play ideas. We talked with lots of new friends, old friends and saw some amazing presentations. We heard a great speech from John Francis, the planet walker.

The Wisconsin Association for Environmental Education put together an amazing Winter Workshop!

And now it is time to recover and get back in the swing of things at home!

holiday events that are green friendly

The Holiday Train Express exhibit at the Olbrich Botanical Garden may not be the most natural event for my girls to attend to, BUT by attending events at the garden we are helping to support the other programs that they have.

Our family Christmas celebrations have started so we took the whole family to the train exhibit.

Along with the trains they had some really neat handmade bird houses on display.

After the train exhibit we headed to the conservatory. They have a rainforest products exhibit set up in the conservatory and Sam had fun going through the trails looking for all the products and plants that went with them.

They had "scavenger" hunt type cards that were available for people to walk around with, which of course Sam loved.

It was a great way to celebrate the Holiday, burn off some energy for the girls and show our family a great little treasure in our town.

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The Nitty Gritty!
If you are in the Madison area and have not been to the Olbrich Botanical Garden you should absolutely check it out.

Here are some other exhibits and programs that we have seen at the garden.

Butterfly Exhibit

Spring Flower Show

Toddler Story Time Programs

wi environmental education professional development event

Super excited about an upcoming WAEE (WI Association for Environmental Education) event! This is one of my favorite EE functions every year because it is in the most beautiful setting and I get to do some pretty incredible cross country skiing. Oh AND I get to network with some great educators and gain some new skills in my field too!! 

Would love to have some of you attend or pass along this information to people you may know that might be interested.

Okay, all that text is super small! Sorry I was trying to get it all off of a PDF and it just isn't working for me. BUT if you are interested in reading me and possibly registering you need to head to www.waee.org. And the links above don't seem to be working either SO

Here is a link to the document above in case you want to read it a bit bigger!

Planet Walker - www.planetwalk.org

WAEE - www.waee.org and Winter Workshop Info and Facebook Event 

a break from birds - Cave of the Mounds

We were going to make some bird feeders today and I was also going to share all the books that we have been reading this week but we woke up this morning motivated for a big outing (may have helped that Chris had the day off!). So we packed up a big picnic lunch and headed just under an hour west of Madison to Blue Mounds where Cave of the Mounds is located.

Check out the amazing adventure we had far beneath the Earth!

 
 
 
 
 

I have a bunch more pictures I could have posted but I didn't want to overwhelm you all!  Check out the Facebook page if you are interested in seeing more.

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The Nitty Gritty!

A cave was a bit of a stretch for a three year old and a 18 month old. They kind of understood that we were under the ground, looking at rocks and that we couldn't touch anything because it was very fragile. But all of the rest of the science behind what a cave is and how it is made went way over their heads.

Even though they didn't learn a ton from this trip I still think it was very beneficial and a lot of fun for all of us. They got to see things that they have never seen before and stretched the comfort levels in new and different ways.

I have some advice for parents of little ones that want to try out natural features like this that have guided tours. When you are with a group and have to walk in a line (like we did in the cave going single file the whole time) be at the back. I think this is the best place because then you can walk at your child's pace without holding up anyone else, you can step away from the group if your child becomes too fussy and it is much easier to distract a child with chatting, songs or other things when you are not right up in front by the naturalist/guide. You have to try your best to be respectful of the other guests that are trying to tour as well and just hope that most of them are parents too and understand what you are trying to do.

Some other tips that might help with toddlers and preschoolers on these kinds of tours:

• be sure to bring along water (you never know how long to the next water fountain)
• have them go to the bathroom right before the tour (duh!)
• if the facility has a map of the tour or their park let your child bring that along for them to look at and try to follow along
• if you have a camera that your child can use bring that so they can take pictures to help them remember the tour
• have anything else to suggest?  Please leave me a comment and let me know!

field trip - butterfly exhibit

This was our second year in a row to go to the Olbrich Botanical Garden butterfly exhibit. Last year Avery was still pretty little and stayed in the carrier the whole time (probably a sleep!) so it was neat to see her reacting to the butterflies and trying to find them.

I let the girls lead the way this year (who am I kidding they just weren't listening to me at all and were really going where ever they wanted to anyway!) and we did laps all over the conservatory.

Okay, that was a lot of pictures! But I just loved those butterflies. Just like last year Sam's favorite part was the laminated card they gave out for you to be able to identify the butterflies. BUT unlike last year she could really match up the butterflies. She was able to notice the details and the small differences between the pictures.

It was a great morning outing!

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The Nitty Gritty!

I probably don't need to stress again my love of public events like this and as parents utilizing them to help support/add to what you are learning at home. Since we have a caterpillar growing at home and have been learning a lot about bugs lately this was a perfect fit for both of the girls!

For parents I would strongly encourage you to check the calendars of places like gardens, nature centers, zoos, etc. to see what annual public programs they have. Then if you do all of your education or even some of it at home you can match up what you are learning about to what is going on in the area. Or even if you don't do any formal education at home these programs are still great chances for your kids to learn while having a ton of fun!

For educators events like this may offer discounts for daycare centers, camps or schools to bring groups. Exhibits like this are great field trips and fairly easy to do with large groups of kids.

bug week - working with mommy

Today was take your family to work day! What you didn't get that memo?  Oh, right and it is Saturday so for most of you that is not a work day.

Okay, it was take Sam, Avery and Chris to work day! 

I had a family pond critter program this morning that I was really excited about teaching and wanted the family to come with me to check it out. I love getting to share what I do with the girls and especially Chris.

Sam had a great time and got to do a lot of netting in the pond. Avery too had a great time, got super muddy and lost at least one net in the pond (Virginia if you are reading this I will fish them out I promise!). But Avery was very attached to me which made doing my job a bit of a challenge. Chris and the girls only stayed for the first half of the program because it was just too hard for me to be attentive to the other families and look after mine.

The program was a big success and all the families had a good time. We saw a ton of critters, birds, frogs, muscrats and turtles. If you haven't taken your kids to a public family program at your local nature center or zoo it is a MUST this summer!

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The Nitty Gritty!

One more idea that I wanted to share with my educators out there was the craft that we did today at the very end of the family program. We had kids of a wide age range so I wanted to do something that I thought would be enjoyable for all of them.

I photocopied pictures of pond critters and animals. I blew them up so that they were about the size of a half sheet of paper. Then I cut them into pieces. For some of the critters I simply cut them into four pieces and others were as many as 15-20. This way there would be puzzles of varying difficulties for the kids. The kids put together the critter puzzles, then glued their puzzles onto a big piece of cardstock. Then I had informational cards sitting out with pictures of each of the critters and their names. They had to match their picture to the card to identify what they had put together. I encourage the parents to read the information to their child and have them write the name of the critter on their puzzle. It was a super simple project that could be adapted for a wide range of topics. Love that!

Day 355: preparing for a program

So fun to be teaching preschool summer camp programs (I haven't actually taught one yet but I just know it will be awesome!) because when I need to learn things, practice things or prepare I can do it all with Sam and Avery!

Tomorrow I am running a frog and toad camp for 2-3 year oldsso Sam, Avery and I have been listening to frog calls on our Identiflyer, learning about the difference between frogs and toads and pretending to be frogs!

I would love to show you pictures of all that we have been up to but my camera is BUSTED! I have no idea what is going on but my wonderful Nikon D90 is down. The light meter thing that is suppose to tell me how to focus is not showing up and it won't focus at all on automatic. Have no idea what is going on but I am hoping when I get to St. Louis on Friday my awesome photographer sister can help me fix it!!

Anyway, you can check out the identiflyer here. And yes, they have great frog/toad song cards as well. When we were listening to the calls I started out by testing her to see if she remembered from previous times we have played with this which ones were the frogs/toads instead of birds. I would switch the cards back and forth from frogs to birds playing calls and asking her, "Frog or bird?" She had a blast with this and Avery was enthralled with all the calls.

Then as I was looking up frog and toad facts on here and here. Sam got to see lots of pictures of frogs and toads. We compared those pictures to the little frog pet we have living in our kitchen (it was the school pet that is now living at our house). I don't think Sam will really remember the difference between a toad and frog (living on land v. living in water, dry skin v. wet/slimy skin, lays eggs in strands attached to plants v. lays eggs in jelly covered clusters, etc.) but it is good information for her to start hearing.

Lastly, I took some old green scraps of fabric and cut out some lily pads. I put them on the floor and showed Sam how frogs like to hop. We hopped from lily pad to lily pad, counting as we went. We also practiced walking like toads, since they don't hop.

All in all it was a fun, frog filled day! And I feel very prepared to teach a preschool summer camp all about frogs and toads tomorrow!

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The Nitty Gritty!

Here is where I give credit where credit is due. The stuff that we did today were not my own ideas. The program developer for the Wonder Bugs Preschool programs at the Aldo Leopold Nature Center put together all these ideas for the program tomorrow. I was simply practicing them with my girls.

If you are in the area and have a preschooler you absolutely MUST check out these programs!

Day 345: breakfast on the farm

This morning we went to our first county breakfast on the farm. This one happened to be at a dairy farm just a few miles from our house. I sort of thought it would  be a small event with the farm family cooking some locals a breafast of food from their farm. HA! I was misinformed!

 
Have you ever seen a pancake griddle that big before?

 
And this is about HALF of the parking lot!

 
We started out eating breakfast, which is great, and then headed out to see the farm.

 
 
And my understanding that it was just about a meal was also VERY wrong! There was a live band that was really good, a whole exhibit booth hall with games and stuff for the kids, tours, hay rides and face painting!

 
All that while also getting a behind the scenes look at a dairy farm.

 
We got to get an upclose look at where the cows live, where "mommy" cows (the pregnant cows) live while they are waiting to give birth, where baby cow lives, what all goes into their food and just about everything else that has to do with raising dairy cattle!

And probably the girl'a favorite part was eating ice cream early in the morning!

 
We had a great time! I am not sure if Avery will ever stop saying MOO!

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The Nitty Gritty!

Live in WI and want to check one out for yourself? It is not too late there may still be one coming up in your area. Take a look at the WI Dairy Farm Bureau website to see dates and locations.

I found them in Michigan too!

And in Minnesota!

Those were the only states I could find but there may be many more out there! You should look into it.