Bird Craft #3 – Birdhouse Suncatcher

A few weeks ago M used some of his Art Box materials to paint and glue 5 craft sticks (popsicle sticks) into a house shape.  I wasn’t sure what to do with it, but when we started learning about birds, it came to me – it was a perfect birdhouse shape!

Here’s what he used to make the 1st part of his suncatcher:

• 5 Craft sticks, painted, and glued into a house shape
• contact paper cut to fit the house
• tissue paper torn into random pieces
• glue
• a green strip of paper (about 2 1/2 inches wide), with “grass” lines marked along the length of it, going about 3/4 of the way up
• one circle cut from black paper

I took the backing off of the contact paper and M began sticking the tissue paper pieces onto it:
Next, he cut along the lines of the green paper to make grass (yes, I know birdhouses don’t normally sit in the grass, but it seemed like a nice touch.  And he got to practice those scissor skills.) :
We put a line of glue on the back of the craft sticks and glued the contact paper onto it, then glued the grass onto the front, and glued the black circle onto the middle to make the opening:
I trimmed the excess tissue paper off and we popped it onto the window:
Pretty, no?  But we thought  a little birdie might be nice too, so we got more contact paper and more tissue paper and made a little bird using M’s handprints.  I forgot to take a photo of the process, but here’s M showing you how to put your hands together to make a bird:
I traced his hands onto contact paper and cut the bird shape out for him.  After he covered it with tissue paper I added another piece of contact paper over the top and trimmed it up.
I drew a little birdie face on it:
And we glued it to the front of his birdhouse:
I love how it turned out – it’s really much prettier than the picture shows!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Happy May Day!

I hope you are all enjoying your May day!  This is the first time I remember having lilacs in bloom on May 1st in Minnesota.  Aren’t they beautiful?  M says they smell delicious. :)

Have a beautiful day! :)

Books of the Week

Here are the two books both M and I loved this week (the ones in the carousel above are really good too!):

Little Bear’s Friend, by Else Minarik
I remember this book from my own childhood and so enjoyed sharing it with M!  He is allowed to watch Little Bear on TV once in a while and just loves it – and now that he’s able to sit for a longer book I was anxious to introduce these to him.  I know some of you have mentioned these books in your weekly posts, so thank you for reminding me of them!  The simple illustrations in this book and the sweet story of friendship make it one that any child will love.  It is separated into 4 chapters or stories, but M insists on reading the entire thing every time.  And I am happy to oblige. ;)


Wilfred to the Rescue,by Alan MacDonald
This is part of a series called “Stories from Brambly Hedge”, and it’s the first one we’ve read.  It’s very good, and just adventurous enough without being frightening.  It teaches a bit about being brave and helping others as Wilfred the mouse helps rescues a small vole named Sissy who has drifted out into floodwaters during a game of “hide-and-squeak”.  It’s a great book for my adventurous, brave little guy to act out again and again.  
As usual, I’m linking this up to Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns, and to a new (to me) linky at The Adventure of Motherhood, called Feed Me Books Friday.
Have a beautiful day! :)

Music Time – Songs about Birds

There are so many great bird songs out there, I really could make this an extremely loooong post.  Don’t worry. :)  I’m just going to tell you some of our favorite new songs that we’ve been learning this past week.  And I want to share some wonderful websites to use when looking for songs.

I always go to Little Fingers That Play first.  Deborah has so many good, original, and fun songs that I’m always sure to find something M will love.  We’ve been singing “Three Little Birds” a lot.  I even drew some little birds and a nest for a quick flannel board set to go with it: It is such a catchy tune, I have to admit I sing it a lot even when M isn’t around. ;)

Next, Kididdles is another great place to go for songs.  They have a huge list, and if you sign up (totally free) you can print out song sheets as well as activity sheets to go along with some of the songs.  Many songs also have audio files of the tunes.  I added “Kookaburra”, “Robin in the Rain”, and “The Robin” to our little homemade song and poem book, and we’ve been singing these while we play a variety of instruments.

If you don’t have your own homemade songbook, and are interested in books of songs, Vanessa at Silly Eagle Books has this great list of 100 children’s song books.  We’ve been checking these out at our library – one or two a week – and love them.  Thank you, Vanessa, for putting this list together! :)

One more place where I’ve had good luck in looking for songs is childfun.  The site is a bit awkward to maneuver around in (in my opinion), but they have songs listed for every theme you can imagine.  They also have craft ideas, food ideas, and other activity suggestions too!  We found this cute little action poem/song there:

The Chickadee Song
(Fly your fingers away one by one as you sing this song)

Chorus:
Chickadee, chickadee, happy and gay
Chickadee, chickadee, fly away.

Five little chickadees, no room for more,
One flew away, and then there were four.

         Four little chickadees, sitting in a tree,
         One flew away, and then there were three.

         Three little chickadees, don't know what to do,
         One flew away, and then there were two.

         Two little chickadees, sitting in the sun,
         One flew away, then there was one.

         One little chickadee, can't have any fun.
          He flew away, and then there were none.


Of course there are a ton of other great songs and poems that go with a bird theme… 5 little Ducks, Little White Duck, 2 Little Blackbirds, Robin Redbreast…. etc.
If you have a favorite song about birds, I’d love to hear it!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Gamewright Giveaway!

Go here to check out Adriana’s awesome game giveaway at My Bilingual Boys! :) 

Bird Craft #2 – Paper Bag Bird’s Nest

This is what M woke up to see on the table Tuesday morning:Supplies: brown paper lunch bag, glue, crayons or markers, yarn, feathers, anything interesting to line your nest with (you could add in some dried grass and twigs too!).
To make the nest, I rolled the paper bag inward all the way down.  M was dying to do this part, but it can be tricky to get it started; eventually it ends up looking like this:
Then it was time to decorate the nest.  M started off using crayons, but they were hard to manage on something so crumpled.  He switched to markers, which worked much better.
Next he began gluing in the all the fun stuff to make the nest nice and soft:
Look!  A cozy little nest!
Perfect for a little mama-made birdie. :)  M was surprised and thrilled to see this little bird and her eggs waiting to go in the nest a little later. :) 

This was a fun craft project for M, I only added in the little bird because I wanted to give him something special to keep.  He is all about birds right now… even to the point of standing at the window at bedtime saying, “I can’t go to bed, I’m listening to the chickadees and cardinals!” :)  Evidently he is not above using the sweet little birds as stall tactics (and he knows Mama gets excited when he uses the correct names).   It would be fun to do this and use large pom-poms to make birds for the nest.

Have a beautiful day! :)

Science Experiment – Battery Power

M is obsessed with batteries and electricity lately.  I don’t know how many times he has come to me, screwdriver in hand, to see which kind of battery and how many of them a particular toy takes.  He is always trying to figure out how things “go”.

So you can imagine his excitement when I told him our experiment for the day would be trying to light a flashlight bulb with a battery and aluminum foil.

We had a little discussion about how metal is a conductor (his newest word now) of the energy stored inside a battery.  Wires can take this energy to working parts, as can almost any metal, even aluminum foil.

Interestingly, he asked me, “how do wires send the electricity?  There are no holes in wires!”.  It’s so neat to see his little brain working… the idea of electricity traveling inside a wire – well, it would have to have a hole to get into it, right?  So I explained that the whole wire – even the outside – is a conductor, and the energy runs along it.  He asks some tough questions sometimes and I’m not sure my answer entirely satisfied him.  Ah well, he has time to learn!

To do this experiment, take the small bulb out of a flashlight.  You want something like a 2 watt bulb, maybe 3 watts at the most.  You also need scotch tape, a D battery, and two lengths of aluminum foil rolled up tightly.  Ours were about 12” long I’m guessing.

Use the tape to attach one end of each foil “wire” to the battery.  One will be attached to the negative side: and one to the positive side:

Next, take the opposite end of one of the foil “wires” and wrap it around the base of the bulb.Get it as tight as you can, and use tape to secure it if you need to.  This was the toughest part for us… those tiny bulbs are a bit hard to manage.

Next touch the very bottom of the bulb with the loose end of the other “wire”.  Your bulb should light up!  M loved doing this part!Energy from the battery circles through the foil and lights up the bulb.

No pictures of this, but we also used one length of foil and a AA battery.  We placed one end of the foil at one end of the battery and the other end of the foil at the other end of the battery.  Then we placed our fingers over the foil at the ends of the battery and could feel it get warm, then hot!  The energy in side the battery was going through the foil and making it and the battery very warm.   (Note… you don’t want to do this with much bigger batteries, at least with small children, because at some point it could burn.  These batteries are not going to electrocute anyone, but it’s always best to be safe!)  I wonder if this would be a good way to test batteries and see if they are still good?!

For more science, see Ticia’s Science Sunday posts here!

Have a beautiful and energy-full day! :)

Art Time – Pretty Painted Suncatcher

Since M seems willing to do more planned art and craft activities of late, I’ve had fun thinking up new things to do.  I recently re-organized my craft stash - all 2 carts, 6 drawers worth - and found an embroidery hoop that hasn’t seen the light of day for the past 5 years at least.

I remember seeing something about dot painters and fabric somewhere about a year ago, and that’s what I thought of when I started brainstorming ways to use this hoop.


I found some muslin that I was going to use for goodness-knows-what and put a large square of it in the hoop.  I gave M the choice between markers, watercolors, or his roller paints to decorate this.  He chose the roller paints.  He enjoyed this and I love how it turned out.  I trimmed the extra fabric off and for now it’s still in the hoop, sitting in front of the window over my kitchen sink. 
It did not take him long to make, but I love looking at it.  It just makes me happy. :)
Have a beautiful day! :)

The Art Box – April 26, 2010

 

In the Art Box last week: stickers, stamps, stencils… plus all the usual paper, glue, paint, etc.

 

I knew the stencils and stamps would appeal to M since they are some of his favorite art supplies.  We did some planned art projects during the week too, so there wasn’t a ton of child-directed art done this week.  But here’s what he did…

Stenciling with his roller paints and some regular tempera too:

 

A collage with stamps, buttons, a pom pom and some hole punched circles.  And some random drawing thrown in too. :)   

A sticker collage with some stamps, stickers, and a craft stick glued on for good measure:

Have some children’s art you’d like to show off?  Link it up below (remember to link back here in your blog post)!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Preschool Corner – April 25, 2010

M is 3.5 years old.

This was a pretty laid back week.  We’ve had a bird theme going on, but I’ll wait until we’ve finished all our activities before (hopefully) including them all in one Preschool Corner post.
Here are some of the other things we’ve done…

Fine Motor Skills:
Tweezing pom poms into a vase:


Building with a pipe connector toy.  This is actually a game, called Pipeline, that I found at a thrift store for next to nothing.  I thought it would make a great fine motor activity, and M loves it!

Literacy:
I set out a mini ABC foam puzzle for M.  He likes to link these together in one long line.  I try to get him to do it in alphabetical order, but that’s really hit or miss at this point. :)

He did great with matching up these rhyming cards (from Prekinders):



He put together these little sticker scenes by matching the letters on the stickers to the letters on the paper.  I made these for him a long time ago to do on a car trip.  We just never got around to them.  He really enjoyed them this week.  To see more about this, go here.

And one morning I found him “reading” a few books to his trucks. :)  So sweet! 
Sensory, Practical Life, and Art:
We are fortunate to have a breezeway in our home (kind of like a 3 season porch, but it runs from the front of the house to the back); when it was too cold to go out one day I set him up in the breezeway on a towel with this messy little project:
This was scooping and pouring practice for him.  He placed the funnel into a bud vase, then used the ice cream scoop to scoop and pour the colored sand into the funnel. 
He quickly realized how neat the layers looked and it turned into an art experience too:  
Then, of course, he wanted to do more with the sand so I gave him some glue and colored paper and he made these:

For more Preschool Corner posts and ideas go here!

Have a beautiful day! :)