Birds, Caps, Adam and Eve

Time just passes so fast! I never finished posting about our Bird Themed week. Here are a few more projects we did that week.

We made some bird treats. First we took some slices of bread and cut them into star shapes using cookie cutters. I poked a hole into one tip so we could thread the string through to tie it up. We let them sit and dry out over night. The next day we spread peanut butter onto one side and then dipped that side into a plate of bird seed. Once one side was covered we turned them over and covered the other side.

We found that we had to add extra bird seed to the places that didn't cover well and press it into the peanut butter.

We found a place to hang them up outside. We don't really have good places to hang bird treats and so they ended up near the gate. Then we waited for the birds to come and enjoy their treats...and waited and waited. Unfortunately, the birds in our neighborhood didn't appreciate our efforts. One eventually fell off and was then consumed by the birds on the ground. A couple days later I broke the other one off the string and left it on the ground too. Okay, it wasn't the best place to hang the treats.

Our next project was to make treats for ourselves. We decided to make bird nests. These are made with crushed cereal. We used Chex style cereal because that is what we had. Chloe enjoyed doing the crushing with her own rolling pin.

I found the recipe here. We pressed the mixture into muffin tins lined with cupcake papers. You can't really tell by this picture but there are slight depressions in the center to make them look like nests.

We added the "eggs" (m&m candy because that is what we had on hand) and put them in the refrigerator for a few hours.

Our m&m's had a mixture of colors but that gave Chloe a chance to sort.

They were so delicious!

We also made these cute birds inspired by this duck craft.

One other project I worked on that week was to try my hand at homemade water colors.

Don't they look pretty? We were kind of disappointed with these. When we paint with them, they leave deposits of baking soda on the paper that flake off when it dries. The paint itself dries out quite a bit between uses. I find that I have to add a bit of water to each cup to get a bright enough color to paint with. We will probably look for a different recipe to try. I also learned that I need to check my container for holes before adding liquid! Most of the cups in this egg carton had tiny holes poked through them. I checked the other few egg cartons that I have on hand and they all have these holes. I guess they come that way. Now when we use them, I make sure I put paper towel under the carton.

 The next week we used Before Five In A Row by Jane Claire Lambert. The book we read was Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina. I didn't take many pictures of this weeks lessons but I used two resources. The first was here on homeschoolshare.com. The other is from one of my favorite sites for printables, Homeschool Creations and the link to her preschool pack for Caps for Sale is here.

This is a project we did to go along with this lesson.

This week we are doing a lapbook about Adam and Eve which I found here at Lapbook Lessons. Along with the lapbook we are working on basic concepts using worksheets from two books Everything for Early Learning and More of Everything for Early Learning. 

In the coming weeks we will be using an Apple Theme, Farm Theme, Owl Theme using the book Owl Babies by Martin Waddell, and a lapbook about Creation.