Ponds, Birds, What Next?

Chloe is really enjoying playing school. The pond theme was a big hit last week. We made our pond sensory box. At first we left it out on the porch but because the temperatures were reaching 100 degrees and higher, the box didn't get played with for a few days. I decided we needed to bring it inside. Some of the plastic frogs and turtles and the craft foam lily pads were moved to the water tub/table on the first day. We inherited a washtub on legs when we bought this house. It's a great water station for Chloe to play with.

This week we've started our bird theme. We got off to a late start this morning on lessons because the bird sensory box we put together last night was a great distraction. The base filler in the bird box is bird seed which we will be feeding to the birds outside our fence so our dog, Molly, won't chase them away. I had to fashion a stick tree out of several  sticks, three actually, to get a good "tree" with a nice branch layout for the birds nests we made today.

I used two different kinds of yarn and about 2/3 of a small bottle of white glue. The glue is almost dry and next we will pop the balloons. I wanted the nests to be small enough to put in my stick tree so I used water balloons.

I also made a couple little birds out of pom poms, craft feathers, chenille sticks and googly eyes. The bird seed is surprisingly dirty and now our soft little birdies are dirty too. Then I decided we needed a bird house. I emptied the last of the half & half into a small pitcher so I could use the carton for a bird house. I cut it down to a shorter size and taped it back together. Then I cut out a hole and wrapped the carton  in construction paper. The spout on top became the chimney. Chloe was supposed to put the flowers on the paper but at first she didn't want to get glue on her hands. Then once she did, she was distracted by peeling it off again. I ended up finishing the flowers.

 I had an old flower pot base already painted purple so we painted the inside bottom light blue to be the bird bath. The birds legs turned out a little funny looking and when you sit them on the side of the bird bath, it looks more like a wading pool. For awhile, Chloe pretended it was a bird feeder and filled it up with birdseed. I love how these sensory boxes bring out her imagination! She actually sits and plays in them for long stretches of time, freeing me up to plan what to put in the box next.

I'm looking forward to adding the nests tomorrow. I think we will need some eggs too. We have some river rock just sitting out by the garage so I think we will be painting some of those tomorrow.

Some other projects I have planned for this week is to make a bird treat out of a piece of bread, peanut butter and bird seed. We'll have to look for a good spot for these treats so we can watch birds eat from them. We are also going to make ourselves some edible birds nests filled with candy "eggs".  We are also using the Bird Preschool Pack from Homeschool Creations. There is more to go with this pack  Birds Preschool Pack found at 1+1+1=1.

As I've been researching ideas and projects to do with each theme, I've come across so many good things that don't necessarily go along with any particular theme. I've decided to toss in a few free weeks to pick up on those types of things. Last year I purchased the book Before Five In A Row (BFIAR). I found it was very difficult to get copies of all the books featured. I did find about half of them in two local libraries that are the closest to me. While picking out Preschool Packs from Homeschool Creations, I noticed that Jolanthe is creating packs to go along with some of these books. I will be interspersing some of these as well. I had planned to do an Astronaut/Outer Space theme next week, but I think I will be using the book Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina.  We actually own this book and will be using the Preschool Pack from Homeschool Creations.

I'm learning about blogging as I go along. In this blog, you can see that I learned how to insert photos and link to other websites! We never stop learning.