Birds & Nests Week

Turbo is 34 months

Sweet Pea is 8 months

Be sure to check out my very first GIVE-A-WAY! I know so many families will love this as we do.

This week was birds and Turbo loved learning about them!! 

Learning Aid: Bird Cards
Since the zoo cards were such a hit with Turbo, I decided to do a similar thing for bird week.   I selected 7 common birds to our area: Scrub Jay, Crow, Sparrow, Robin, Morning Dove, Mockingbird and Hummingbird; printed up picture cards and laminated them.  They really facilitated our activities and he was able to refer and play with them as he thought about it.

 We started each day with one of the birds. We talked about the bird, it's colors, the different body parts and how we thought the bird would talk/sing. Then we looked at some YouTube videos to see and hear the bird. I'll put some links to some videos we liked at the end of the post.

Sensory Tub: Bird Seed (of course!)
He loved swirlling the bird seed around the bowl. A cup, a funnel and he was lovin' it!

Build a Bird Nest
We gathered materials in our yard and mud from last weeks' sensory table and made our own birds nest. Turbo was again not very excited about touching the mud, so I helped him through the first stage. He enjoyed adding the twigs, leaves and bark to make it look real. Then we got out our rubber ducks and pretended it was their nest.

Math - Count the 'eggs'
Cupcake papers, muffin tin and playdough. Fun and super fast. I'd help him create a bunch of 'eggs' and then he'd put the correct number in each tin. Turbo asked for this several times during the week.

Patterns - I don't think he really grasps patterns yet, especially creating them. It's something high on my list to work with him. Do-A-Dot markers and some lacing beads.  He seemed to know exactly what I wanted him to do. He then turned the paper upside down and did the pattern the other way. Then he was done.   If you have any tips ~ please leave them as a comment!!

Songs and Music
We do circle time almost every day. We start with songs, then read a story, then do some songs again. Then it naturally transitions into an "activity" as I call our TotSchool.   We added "Two Little Blackbirds" to our songs this week and I cut some blackbirds and a hill out of felt so we could pretend to be Jack and Jill.  This was highly anticipated each morning.

Bird Feeder
I found one from the dollar store, but couldn't find a great place to hang it outside where we could see it well. So we used an old piece of baguette to make our own.  Turbo smoothed on peanut butter and sprinkled the bird seed.  We placed it on our patio table and got to see a lot of different birds come to partake.

Of course we sprinkled birdseed on our walks too.

Make a Bird
Got the idea from here to use a TP roll tube, paint, google eyes and construction paper to a make a cute little bird.  So fun!

Bird Seed Cookie
Cute idea from here to make a cookie to hang off a tree in the yard. It was not successful for us as it completely fell apart. Could be that I didn't have corn syrup so I used Molasses. Oh well, we had fun making it!

Letter of the Week ~ N n - Nest
Turbo was very perplexed that we were doing N instead of B this week. It was cute how he was always reminding me that 'birds' starts with a b.  As you may know, I use Confessions of a Homeschooler's Letter of the Week resources. It saves me a ton of time and are super cute.  We did the usual letter tracing, number sequencing, puzzle, letter sorting, cutting, do-a-dot pages etc. He enjoys these and it's nice to have similar activities from week to week.  Instead of cutting the color cards to make them matching puzzles, I placed them around the hearth and we called out a color and an action (purple & hop) - then do the action and race to get the card.

Additional Bird activities ~ We didn't get around to these, but they were on my idea list.
Bird Graphing
I was planning to do a bird graph to track the birds and quantities that we saw throughout the week. We just didn't get to it.  But we'll definitely do it the next time around.

Edible Bird Nest 
I found this cute little recipe for a rice crispy edible birds nest.  We still might do these this week as I have some leftover Peeps and jellybeans from Easter.

Egg Carton Bird Feeder
Can't find the idea link, but it's basically attaching some twine to the corners of the bottom half of an egg carton, filling the carton with bird seed and hanging it in your yard.

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Funny picture of the week
I've mentioned before that Turbo is obsessed with types of cars. He knows them all! He's always checking out cars to see what kind they are. He asks everyone that comes around "What car do you have". He has no concept that one kind might be 'nicer' than another. Here he's 'shining' his bike and tells me "Mommy, I'm cleaning my Jaguar".  I just about died laughing - so unexpected! 

Some good YOUTUBE Videos I remembered to bookmark while we were watching.
Scrub Jay's Taking a Bath (Turbo's favorite!)
Western Scrub Jay
Scrub jay Sings
Cackle of Scrub Jay

Crow Cawing
Northern Mockingbird Calling

Ok, I have to go to bed.  I'll post my Bird Card learning aid as a file to download this week. If you'd like me to email you when I post it, just leave me a comment below.