Bird's Nest Art

Throughout the spring we watched a momma robin build a nest in our lilac bush.  She laid four eggs and guarded them day and night.  Soon little baby robins hatched and we watched as they grew and learned to fly.  No one has been back to the nest for a while now so decided it was safe to take it down and examine it.  Eva loved looking at it but decided it was lacking- it needed eggs and a bird!  "Let's make a sculpture!" she shouted and Daddy was game for helping her do so.  First they gathered some rocks to use as eggs.

Then they used a pinecone, some bark, a leaf and two little berries to form their bird.

They needed to use some wood glue to hold everything together but soon had a bird to rest in the nest.

I think it turned out adorable and I love how creative kids can be when we let them do their own thing!

Early Literacy: Sight Words

I recently noticed that the number of words Eva is able to recognize and spell has been increasing.  For a while she knew her name and ours and that was about it (besides boo which she has hung onto since Halloween).  Now she is noticing more words in the environment and starting to hold on to them.

While she can read and spell them, she does not know how to write them yet.  (The only word I've actually taught her how to write is "love" so that she could sign birthday cards for family members.)  The other day I sat down with her and wrote down the words she can both read and spell to make a chart to help her learn to write those words.

I hung it from one of our window shades and left some sentence strips and markers for her to use to write when the mood strikes her.  She grabs the word she wants to write and sets it above her sentence strip for a reference.

I love finding her "writings" and knowing that she has embraced this and done it on her own.

Some other things we do with her little word wall are:

• use a pointer to point and read the words
• I say a word and Eva points to it
• take the words out and spread them on the table then Eva closes her eyes and I hide a sticker under one of the words; she then has to read a word and then look under it to try and find the prize
• trace the words with her finger
• take a word and make it with magnetic letters
• take a word and stamp it with alphabet stamps

As she learns new words I'll remove some of the really well known ones and put the new ones in their place.  

Paper Plate Watermelon

In our house summer = watermelon.  I have to buy one every week for Eva and Daddy to devour.  Their love of the fruit inspired this craft.  All you need is a white paper plate, red, green and black paint and a Q-tip.  To start Eva painted the inside of the plate red and then the rim green.

When that dried, I bent one end of the Q-tip to make a seed stamp for dabbing in the black paint.

You could then cut it into wedges when it dries but Eva wanted to leave hers whole.

Bubble Wrap Painting

The other day Eva was playing with some bubble wrap (we buy toys why?) and commented that the bubbles looked like little blueberries and this idea was born.  I cut a square of the wrap and Eva painted it with blue paint.

Then she flipped the wrap over and stamped it onto a sheet of paper a few times.

She then decided her blueberries needed a bowl so she painted a circle around them to contain them.

After finishing with the blueberries she informed me that the bubbles also looked like corn kernels so I grabbed the yellow paint and cut out a cob shape from the bubble wrap for stamping.

I suggested painting some husks on but Eva insisted on another bowl so I bowed to the artiste.

I love how spur of the moment crafts can turn out to be the most fun!