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Learning About Birds

Every month I get so excited about our Mother Goose Time Curriculum and I say its our favorite theme, but then the next theme is just as good. They are really nailing it this year. We are learning about Birds and Eggs for April. This week has been amazing. The suggested stories have been great, the activities engaging, and the information we are getting about our feathered friends has been phenomenal. I am also doubly pleased because again I can use this as my daughters science as well. It is so convenient to be able to teach the science and social studies units together. Makes my job easier and lets them learn and work together. It's a beautiful thing.

Week One is titled In the Nest. It is all about nests, eggs, hatchlings, bird food, and learning to fly. We have learned all about the birds life cycle and most importantly we have learned about adorable baby birds. The first day was about nests. We wrote our names on eggs this month instead of name tags and then placed them on a poster of a nest. Then we took our supplies outside because we finally had some sunshine and we needed some fresh air. I love that Mother Goose Time is so flexible and portable. We put a blanket down and did the invitation to create activity. We made little nests out of the materials and even used some grass and flowers to decorate the nests. After the nests were built we decided to make some origami birds to go in them. You can not make a nest and not make birds My daughter has been really into origami after watching an old Reading Rainbow episode we checked out from the library. We also played the Stick Stack game while we were outside. It was a lot of fun, we used our pocket cube as a big dice and them placed the amount of sticks that was rolled onto the nest picture to build our own nest. We mixed the adding numbers with the subtracting numbers on the cube to make it more challenging. We also looked at birds around our lake and listened for birds while we were out there.



Day 2 was about eggs and was also filled with fun facts and activities. We made the invitation to create which was a cut out of an egg, an egg carton and some pom poms and clothes pins. We put our paint in the egg carton and then used the clothes pins to pinch the pom poms and turn them into paintbrushes. After this I made some play dough out of Peeps candy and let him use the E cookie cutter from this months box to make impressions and cut outs in the dough. They loved making and playing with the Peeps dough. This was from a recipe that I found years ago and don't remember where I saw it. You put 5 Peeps in a bowl then add 3 Tbsp cornstarch and 1 1/2 tsp cooking oil. I microwaved it for 30 sec. then stirred it until it became dough like then kneaded it a little adding more cornstarch if needed. If your kids have never microwaved a Peep its a lot of fun to watch. They get huge! We also read a book that we own that gives more information about eggs and hatching times and chick development. 






Another highlight of the week was our bird inspired tea time that we had. We like to have tea every Thursday and eat treats that we made together while reading great books and poetry. The kids love it. This week I found a couple great poetry books featuring birds. We made strawberry oat bars and bird nest candies. While we were waiting for the bars to cool we did the Bird Feeder activity and then hung our feeders around the patio.



Also I just wanted to share a really proud moment. My husband and kids watched a movie a couple nights ago while I was at work and my daughter realized that the mosquito in the movie that was drinking blood was a boy. She remembered last month when we were learning about mosquitos at the pond that only the females drink blood. She proudly told me that the movie was wrong and I did a happy dance that she actually does listen to me. Thanks Mother Goose Time!


*Mother Goose Time has generously provided this curriculum to us in exchange for our stories and honest opinions*


    

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