Tweet Easter Crafts

Around here, spring means the wildlife finally creeps out from their winter hiding spots, especially the birds. Spring means we see more cardinals, robins, blue jays, and starlings. All of those birds are around during the winter but they're so much more active in the spring as they hunt for worms, splash in puddles, and fight with other birds over trees to nest in. And with Easter, the talk always turns to bunny rabbits and chicks. In fact, the preschool story hour at the library had live bunnies and chickens last week. It seemed like this would be a good time to do a craft with birds. I like doing animal craft projects because they are essentially instand vocabulary lessons. You have to use new vocabulary when you talk about them. With birds, doing a craft on that topic would introduce Kenson to the words beak, feathers, and nests.

So we looked at a site with a webcam of birds nesting and feeding as well as still shots of birds. I printed birds onto scrapbook paper using a template I found online. Then I cut them out and Kenson added googly eyes and some feathers. Every bird needs a nest so we then made yarn nests by dipping lengths of yarn into white glue and draping it around an inflated Ziplock bag. Kenson dropped the yarn into the glue for me while I coated the yarn and arranged it to make a nest. (You are supposed to use balloon instead of baggies but I forgot to get balloons to do the projec. I'm sure there are balloons somewhere in the basement with all my teaching stuff but after looking and not quickly locating the box that had my science supplies in it, I gave up. Um, they worked but a balloon would have been better.)

We put the birds into the nests, stuffed the baskets with Easter grass and added some candies, and voila! Easter treats to share.