Nest / Animal Homes Unit: MFW week 5

This week we studied nests and animal homes.  Caleb is our local animal expert and knows the names of animals that I did not know even existed- so he was excited about this one.  I was for sure he was going to have to teach me this week, but we actually learned a lot that he didn’t already know. The theme from our curriculum was “God takes good care of me”.  So we talked about how He takes care of the birds and how much more He will take care of us.

This week I did what I like to call, a reverse sensory experience.  Usually with our sensory bins I get together all the stuff and present it to them in a cute way that goes along with the theme and then they take it apart and play.  This week I gave Caleb 2 boxes of “supplies”, had him collect some big branches from outside, and let him build his own animal habitat on a piece of left over canvas.   He loved this and spent hours perfecting it.  He is very particular, creative, and thinks like an engineer, so activities like this are great for him.

The supplies: brown gift wrapping filler, rope, raffia, wooden box, a few nests from craft store, a bird house, bag of stones, faux birds from floral section at Micheal’s, eggs (2 sizes), little hedgehogs and a squirrel from Hobby Lobby

the squirrels peaking out of their homes

Caleb proudly displaying his finished creation. We did it on the dining room table to keep it out of reach from little hands and also so he could keep it up for a few days.

Here are the rest of our projects from this unit.  We used my first designed play dough mat for our textile letter lesson.  I have decided to make a whole series of these to go along with each unit in our My Father’s World Curriculum.  They were kind enough to give me permission to share them with you, so you can download this weeks, right here.  And stay tuned for more, as well as some other printables for tots who are wanting to learn along with their older siblings!

Here is the completed play dough mat for the nest unit. I printed this off and then laminated it. If you don’t have a laminator just put it in a clear sheet protector from any office store and you are set!

We made chocolate peanut butter nests. I was going to follow a recipe, but decided to use what I had on hand instead. Here is how we made ours: chow mein noodles (about 2 cups), melted chocolate chips (about 1 cup or so) and a few scoops of peanut butter. Stir all that together and press it into a individual sized bowls (one for each child participating) sprayed with cooking spray (or use muffin tins). Top with jelly beans and then freeze and eat when hardened.

Yum!

Chocolate= no shirt with MG. ;o) And as you can see, she is for sure my girl with that excited face as she dives into CHOCOLATE!

We did sequencing events. I had Caleb make up a story to go with these images and had him tell it to me after he ordered them.

We also used this printable to play memory matching the animals to their homes.  I just printed them, laminated them, cut them out as cards, and made one to one matches (there are multiples so you have to cut some of the animals out).  We flipped them over and played memory SEVERAL times, and of course Caleb won all the games!

So that was our week, hope yours was as fun and crazy as ours was!