Greening Sam and Avery

bird week - flying like birds

Bird Week Day One - eating like birds

Bird Week Day Two - building like birds

Bird Week Day Three - talking like birds

When I told Sam that we were going to make wings for us today she got very excited about the idea that we were going to get to fly like birds. I had to work really hard to explain to her that we were just going to be pretending to fly and that even though we would have wings we still wouldn't really be able to fly like a bird.

I started with some old cardboard boxes, traced the outline of two wings and then used a knife to cut them out. I then stapled pipe cleaners and rubber bands to the backs of the wings as a way to attach them to the girls' arms.

 
The rubber bands worked best but I only had two so we had to use pipe cleaners.

 
Then the girls glued lots of feathers to the tops of their wings.

 
Sam had lots of questions while we were working on the wings and Avery really enjoyed picking out the color of feathers.

Sam and I talked about why we would not be able to fly even though we had wings; we are bigger than birds, we don't have feathers on the rest of our bodies and our bodies aren't the same shape as birds'.

Then once the glue dried the girls couldn't wait to test out the wings.

 
 
 
 
While the girls were playing with the wings we talked about how different birds fly. Some soar high up in the sky (eagles), some flap their small wings very quickly (hummingbirds), some flap their larger wongs more slowly (geese, herons, cranes) and some tuck their wings close to their bodies so they can dive through the sky or the water.

We didn't get a chance to head out and watch birds flying but if I didn't have work today we would have spent the morning at the park watching birds and talking about how they fly.

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The Nitty Gritty!

This could be a fun one for in a preschool classroom. Would take a lot of feathers but watching a whole classroom have the kind of fun and learning that my two girls had today would be worth it!

If you like this activity and want to do it with your kids you could think about postponing it for a while and collecting real feathers to put on the wings. It might take a while to collect that many feathers but it would certainly add to the exploration and discovery involved in the craft project.

 

bird week - building like birds

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!

 

Day 126: alphabet tree cookies

You could say that once I discover something I become stuck on that idea. Hence the MANY toilet paper tube posts and projects we have done the past few months.  Lately I have been stuck on this idea of tree blocks. You can find the first use for us here and then another one here.

I modified the idea of the tree blocks just a little bit, making them thinner and turning them into alphabet tree cookies!

My poor husband spent probably almost an hour yesterday cutting a big branch into 26 cookies for me, BY HAND (we don't own a power saw).  Don't feel too bad for him he got a backrub out of the deal!

I wrote the letters on the cookies just with permanent marker and then cooked them for a little while in the oven to help dry them out a bit (the branch was a bit green) and kill any bugs that might be in them.

My sister suggested thinking of letters more just as shapes at this point with Sam and suggested that I create a matching game for her with letters.  52 cookies might have been pushing it in one night so I wrote out a set of letters on note cards. 

Sam and I layed out the cards in order (we sang the alphabet very slowly while we did this) and then pulled the tree cookies out of the bag one at a time and found the match.

 
The cookies are all different sizes, thicknesses and not all necessarily totally flat (he was using a hand saw!).  But the imperfections are what make them so awesome.  She can use these to build towers for Avery to knock over.  Combine them with regular wood blocks to make things more interesting or use them with the cards to work on letters.  Lots of options.

And Avery enjoyed the bag full of things for her to check out!

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The Nitty Gritty!

I am seeing so many more options for ways to work with this idea.  A second set that are lower case so that when she is ready we can match uppercase with lowercase.  Bigger ones! Not really any reason other than it would be cool to have HUGE tree cookies.  If you had multiples of the same letters you could do simple spelling with them as well.  Who needs those Leapster things, I've got tree branches and a marker!! HA!

Multiple purpose toys are amazing and these tree cookies (I am hoping!) will fit into that category.  What would you do with a bunch of tree cookies? 

Day 125: reuse it letter hunt

(Did you see that video I posted earlier?  NO? Scroll down and WATCH! It is amazing!)

Alphabet/letter week continues at our house!

We are working on letters and she is really into scissors right now.  Trying to combine those two things and I remembered an activity that I had seen out in blog world a while ago.  A great reuse it activity and an very easy one. 

I got some magazines form our big recycle box, scissors and glue.  The idea is to focus on one letter at a time, finding them in the magazine and then cutting them out.  I wanted her to be able to have some place fun to keep all the letters that she found and a notebook just wasn't neat enough.  So I made her a little recycled notebook (see Nitty Gritty for how to make the "TLC" book that is in the picture below). 

Sam LOVED this activity.  She actually understood what we were doing and really got into it.  I know I probably should be working on the letters in the correct order but her interest right now is in the letters in her name so I am just going with it.  We searched for S, A and M. 

This is the S page!

By the time we got to M, which Sam struggles with a bit, she was starting to lose focus, but we had already worked on the project for almost a half hour!  I was pretty proud of her. 

Our little book has more pages so as she learns new letters and gets more interested we will do more pages of letters. 

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The Nitty Gritty!

Got this idea from here. A great place to get ideas for educational and fun activities.

The book starts out as a box of some sort.  The size of the box doesn't matter, the bigger the box the bigger your notebook will be.  But it should be the cereal, cracker, granola bar type box (not the real stiff cardboard).  You only need one side of the box; cut it out and fold it in half. This will be the front and back cover of your notebook.  Poke three holes along the fold (top, middle and bottom). Then cut some regular paper to be just slightly smaller than the size of the notebook (when the front and back cover are layed out flat).

Poke holes in the paper that line up with the holes in the cardboard.  Weave the string through the holes back and forth and end with both ends on the inside of the book to tie the knot.Try and have a long length of string left over that you pull back through the middle hole so that you can wrap the string around the book and tie it closed if you want.

This is the front of our book.

And this is the back.

Isn't that cow adorable?  Love it!

Sorry if this tutorial is a bit hard to follow.  The string is the hardest part to explain but if you just play around with it for a bit you should be able to make something work. 

These books are fun to do make with older kids or school groups so that they can use them for journaling, homework assignments or observations while they are outside.

Day 123: green alphabet

So this might be a long week!  Sam had no interest in working on her letters today.  Michelle commented yesterday with the great suggestion of the N is for Nature coloring book.  It is very cute and I printed it out today for Sam.  I am also trying to get that book for us to read as well. 

Sam has shown so much interest in letters, asking us all the time "What's this for?" (copying the way you read an alphabet book, A is for...).  But I think she may be a bit too young to really get it.  I would love for her to be able to recoginize the letters in her name SAM.  But she is really struggling with the m.  We started with our Eric Carle Animal flash cards.  These are fabulous by the way if you haven't checked them out they are/were a huge hit at our house.  They are the first set of flash cards we used with her from a very young age and she knew all the animals really fast.  This use to be a "parlor trick" that we would do when friends came over.  People were impressed when she knew what a Xolo was!  (yes we were those parents.  I mean what are kids for if they aren't for entertaining dinner guests?)

After we worked on the letters with the animal flash cards for a bit I pulled out the coloring book that I had put into a three ringed binder.  She colored a bit but still could not say M back to me from memory after I had showed and told her what it was several times.  She kept saying W.  Strange.

Anyway...I am working on some more hands-on type of activities that might be more vaguely attached to the alphabet. I was to encourage her interest and not have her hating the topic!

But I have lots of other stuff to tell you all about tonight.  Yesterday officially ended the October Challenge. I didn't have a prize for this past month but I still really appreciate all of the people that sent in their challenge entries.  I even got one more from Tami! 

"I think one of the biggest examples we use at our house to be kind to the environment, would be to upcycle or reuse what has been tossed away by someone else.  It's not only great for the environment, but it's thrifty and saves our family a ton of money, and keeps unnecessary things out of our landfills.  For example, I rarely buy new books, toys, or clothing for my son.  I shop rummage sales, Goodwill, St. Vinnie's, Craigslist, and consignment shops in search of a good deal.  You can find lots of "like new" or name brand items, at thrift store prices.  The way a 2 year old wears through pants, breaks toys, or rips books makes me also feel better about not paying full price.  I hope "being thrifty" will pass on to my son - I know my mother was a great example for me." - Tami

But today starts another month and a different challenge!  So bring on November.  This month I know it will start (at least for some of us) to get harder to get outside. Because of cooler temperatures it will be easy to hole-up inside and avoid the outdoors.  So I want to do everything I can to encourage us all to GET OUTSIDE!  My challenge for this month is two-fold.  First I want you to take your family or class for a hike.  A long walk in a natural area.  Second I want this hike to occur in a NEW place.  Get out and explore.  Find a new park or just a new trail in a park you know.  But really explore the unkown and unfamiliar.  Going hiking during this time of year can be really rewarding because with less leaves on the trees views can be more amazing, birds and other wildlife can be easier to spot and certain not so friendly plants and insects are starting to go dormant and be less of a pest. It can be an amazing experience.  So GO! Hike. Explore. And then come back and tell me how it went.  Share your experiences to motivate others to get outside.  That's what it is all about, just encouraging each other that even with the smallest of kids it IS possible and enjoyable to get outside!

Finally, I am working on a fun idea for the blog for this month and next month.  I want to do some toy reviews.  I want to show all the parents out there some good options for Christmas presents.  Some handmade, wood or fabric, environmentally friendly, kid learning friendly and endless play kind of options.  AND I ALREADY HAVE ONE TOY MAKER LINED UP!  So excited to share the first Etsy Store with you but you will have to wait to hear about them.  What I need from you is some suggestions of other toy makers.  Things you have seen that you would love to hear more about.  Friends you know that might be interested in partnering with me.  Types of toys you think are great eco-friendly options.  I would love to hear your suggestions! Not only will I be reviewing these toys but also GIVING THEM AWAY to readers to help with the Christmas shopping! YEAH! Can you tell that I am excited about this? 

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The Nitty Gritty!

This was already a really long post so I will keep this short.

The flash cards were good today for one really great reason.  AVERY! She paid attention to them.  Watched as Sam and I were working with them and seemed interested.  It reminded me that it was about this time that I started working with Sam on them.  And Sam showed an interest  in working with Avery on the flash cards.  How great would that be to have Sam sit with Avery and do flashcards together?  Has anyone ever tried this before?  Could it also help Sam learn her letters?  So interested in this idea of an older sibling being the teacher.  Would love to hear stories of other moms that have done something like this.  Super excited to have a new animal related activity to work on with Avery.

Day 122: alphabet books

A few days ago I asked if anyone had any suggestions for alphabet books.  Sam is really starting to learn her letters and showing a good deal of interest so I want to encourage that and really start working on the alphabet with her.

We headed to the library with a long list in hand.  We only found four!  But a couple of them were big hits and we have requested a few others from different libraries.  Here are the first ones that we have come across.

Eating the Alphabet by Lois Ehlert. This is a book in true Ehlert fashion.  We love the pictures, the great colors and it is amazing that there really are fruits and vegetables for every letter!  Sam loves to hold the book like a menu and "order" things from it.  So funny.

Farm Alphabet Book by Jane Miller. This is an older one but it does a great job of depicting life on a farm.  Sam loves to talk about the animals in the pictures.  Since we don't live on a farm it is really good for her to get to see what that looks like.

These last two are really neat books that I have enjoyed but they are both a bit too long and complicated for Sam, they just didn't hold her attention.  But I wanted to still pass them along for others that might have slightly older kids.

S if for Save the Planet; A How-to-Be Green Alphabet by Brad Herzog. This one is neat because for each letter there is the rhyming alphabet related poem that deals with an environmental issue but then there is also a couple paragraph indepth description of that issue. The detailed information was obviously not geared toward Sam so I didn't read it with her but I went back and was looking through some it and really found it interesting.  It think there is a whole serious of these types of alphabet books by Brad Herzog on many different topics.

Summer an Alphabet Acrostic by Steven Schnur.  Sam does not get the idea of an acrostic so this is still a bit above her head.  But the poetry is really neat and the pictures are cute.  There are books about the other seasons too in this same format.  Would be great for older kids first learning how to do acrostic poetry!

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The Nitty Gritty!

I have way more books to try and find.  I have also been looking through some other bloggers book lists to get ideas as well.  If you know of anyone that has good book lists please send the link my way, we are always looking.  There just isn't anything better than having lots of good books in the house. 

Starting tomorrow we are going to be focusing on the alphabet.  THEME WEEK!  YIKES!  Could be a challenge but I am excited to take it on.  We will see what I can come up with. 

Also, I just wanted to mention really quickly how much I enjoyed presenting on this little project at the Wisoconsin Association for Environmental Education conference.  I was telling my husband today that by having to describe this project to other people it really ironed out some things in my own mind.  I will have some new explanations and definitons of things up on the "The What, The Why and The Who" page soon!  I got to reconnect with some amazing people and meet a few new ones as well.  I am honored to have been able to be a part of their program.  I know not everyone that reads this is from Wisconsin, in fact I don't think I have very many Wisconsin readers, but there is an EE association in EVERY state and they are a really great resource to learn about programs, events and other environmentally related things.  So I would suggest checking out your local association and becoming a member.  They do amazing work!

Day 24: hands-on-feet-in

So if there is one thing that I have learned over that last 3 weeks plus of doing this with Sam and Avery it is to be flexible and today was no different. 

We started out thinking we were going to do a great color walk at Governor Nelson's State Park using our color wheel.  But when you arrive at the park to discover that the two year old DOES NOT HAVE SHOES plans have to be adjusted a little bit!  HA! 

We still worked with the color wheel a bit, 

but the focus of the walk became much more about what she could feel with her feet. 

 

And it is always fun when you can find a little friend!
 

And Avery got in on the action. 

The lack of shoes ended up being a great thing.  Sam had a lot of fun in all the puddles from our huge storm last night and got to put her feet in Lake Mendota for the first time. 

Love feet-in kind of days!  Have you had a feet-in day lately?

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The Nitty Gritty!

The color wheel is something that I have listed in the "Tools" page on the sidebar.  It is super simple to make.  Just grab some paint sample cards from your local hardware store, punch a hole in each one and then string them on a binder ring or ribbon.  These can be very handy and a great way to turn a casual walk into a purposeful walk. Much like the sticker/color hunt from a few days ago this activity is a way to turn a scavenger hunt into a simple task that even little ones can do. 

Day 23: natural paint

I hate when I cannot repeat something that I have seen done. I hate when I see a great idea, that someone else does and makes look SO easy and then I cannot recreate it.  

Back in June I worked the Midwest Renewable Energy Association Energy Fair.  I was the coordinator for the children's workshops at the Energy Fair.  Three days of musical presentations, energy related presentations, arts and crafts and games.  One of those presentations was done by Ramy Selim of Sunny Day Earth Solutions (an amazing resource for sustainable products and technologies, you should go check it out!).  He did a natural paint presentation for me where the kids got to make non-toxic paint and then do some painting.  It was a great workshop, the paint was super simple and the kids had a ton of fun with it. I just loved the idea of being able to make paint out of ingredients that I already had in my kitchen! I knew I needed to recreate this.  Ramy was giving out the recipe (which I have included in the Nitty Gritty) so I grabbed one. 

I thought this was a perfect week to try and make natural paint.  During the workshop Ramy used koolaid to make the different colors but I have done some dying using natural items before so I thought I could give that a try.  It was a huge FAILURE on so many levels. 

First of all, I couldn't remember the exact consistency that Ramy had and ours kept being so runny that it just looked like water or so think that it was like painting with watery playdough! 

Second, I didn't have enough of any of the materials that I was using to do the dying (slightly rotten basil to make green, dandelions to make yellow, blueberries to make blue, raspberries to make pink and tea to make brown) to make the colors be dark enough.  The raspberries did make a nice pink color but I had to use the whole berries which meant that there were seeds and bits of fruit in the paint! 

Third, the process of boiling things down to make the dye and mixing the paint was so messy that Sam couldn't really help me with any of the prep work.  She collected the dandelions and helped stir in the dye but that was the end of her involvement.  

We did end up taking some of the paint and mixing in blue food coloring which did a great job of dying the paint but the consistency was still slightly off.  This also meant that our fingers were blue after we tried to paint with it! 

Natural paint is a great idea and if it would have worked out it would have been so cheap!  I am not going to give up on this.  I may try to find other recipes (if anyone has a good one PLEASE share!) or attempt this one again with other dyes. 

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The Nitty Gritty!

Non-Toxic Paint

4 cups cold water, 1 cup boiling water, 3 cups unbleached flour, colored clay or natural colorant

Mix 2 cups flour and 2 cups water in a bowl. Add 1 cup boiling water to the bowl and mix. Add 1 cup cold water and mix.  Add 1 cup flour and 1 cup white clay and mix.  Add more water to desired consistency.  Add colored clay (or natural colorant) to desired color.  Add more water, if needed.  Consistency should be like a thick milkshake. 

I am determined to make this work and would love any advice on making natural paint that anyone has!  Leave me some comment love so I can try this again and not feel like such a failure.

Day 22: colorful snakes

I got the "Fun with Nature; Take-Along Guide" from the library on our last visit.  One activity really caught my attention when I saw it.  Making a snake out of dried beans!  We use beans for art work all the time; Sam loves gluing them on things so we have tons in the house.

We started by looking at all the pictures of snakes that they have in the book and talking about all the different stripes, spots, patterns and colors.  Then I started working on creating our snakes.  This part took FOREVER!  The author suggests using poster board, which we didn't have, and I thought regular paper would be too flimsy to really hold the beans so I had to use cardboard.  This meant I needed an exacto-knife to cut out our snakes.  Sam read books while I cut out three snakes.  I actually drew the snakes on the card board first which turned out to be totally pointless because I couldn't keep the knife on the line anyway!  (If you really like this idea just go buy some poster board!)

Once I got the snakes all cut out I got all the beans together and our glue. 
We used black beans, navy beans (which are the white one!), yellow and green split peas and kidney beans.  I poured glue into a plastic bowl and used paint brushes to apply the glue.  The author says to do the gluing with your fingers but I just knew that was more mess than I was up for!

I gave Sam one snake and she got started. 
About three minutes later...she was done! 
Not sure why she didn't last longer but apparently today was not a bean-gluing kind of day!  Unless however you are a 28 year old that is apparently in need of some art therapy.  Check out my snake!  

I really enjoyed this activity! 

While I sat working on my snake Sam played with the beans; moving them from one spot to another in the muffin tin, counting them and dropping them on the table.  She was content and happy just not really engaged by the activity. 

She also didn't get the idea that there were colors in the snakes.  When I asked her what color she was going to make her snake she said "Color mommy? Where?".  We may need to work a bit more on finding color in animals as this still seems to be a bit of a challenge for her. 

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The Nitty Gritty!

A bit more about the "Fun With Nature; Take-Along Guide" by a whole bunch of people!

I have seen these books before but never the complete "Take-Along Guide" so I wanted to see what it was all about.  As an identification book for kids this one is not so great.  I don't think the pictures are clear enough or simple enough for kids to really be able to use them in comparison with a live animal for identification purposes.  However, the information is simple, fun to read and well organized. The "Take-Along Guide" is big, heavy and hard-back so I am not sure that I would ever really be taking it along with me anywhere.  But there are some fun activities in there; several more that I am anxious to test out. 

Day 21: walk with a purpose

Going for walks is something that I do with my girls daily.  DAILY!  Most of the time we just walk around the neighborhood, head to a park or ride bikes.  But today I tried to add a different element to our walk. 

I made this last night. 

It is just a piece of white paper with clips holding it to a piece of card board.  I took a black marker and drew the lines to make squares then colored a small square of a different color in each box.  The green square use to be pink (which is why it looks weird) but then I found these stickers and there wasn't a pink sticker!  I got the colored stickers from the dollar section from Target!  LOVE THE DOLLAR SECTION! 

So the point is to go for a walk carrying the paper and stickers (you don't have to have stickers that match the color, they could be just plain star stickers or even just whatever stickers you have lying around).  As you walk look for things that match each color and place a sticker in the box for each thing that matches.  Sam loves anything to do with stickers so I knew she would be all over this. 
She liked looking for the colors but was a bit confused about where to put the stickers.  It took many practices for her to get what she was doing.  

The most amusing part was that Sam needed to sit down to put the stickers on and it didn't seem to matter where she was or who's yard she was in, she just sat down and put on her stickers! 

This was a really great activity but at two years old it took A LOT of guidance.  I had to be constantly asking her what color things were, where she should put the stickers, correcting color mistakes that she made, etc.  With the heat and Avery being very crabby we didn't last as long as I had hoped.

Great activity though. Definitely one you should try!

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The Nitty Gritty!

I got this activity from .  The author suggested making tally marks to count the number of times a color was found.  I knew that Sam wouldn't understand tally marks, she barely understands counting, so I came up with the sticker idea to simplify the concept. 

The neat thing about this idea is that you could adjust it to so many different things.  It is basically a scavenger hunt tailored to have a hands-on component that even a two year old can do.  You could do a similar thing with pictures of things for them to find (birds, trees, animals, flowers, insects, etc.) and then just use the stickers to mark how many of each item they find.  I have something kind of like this in my Scavenger Hunt page on the sidebar, complete with "clipart" type pictures that you can download and print off.