Happy Spring!


Today is the first day of spring and we had to celebrate by making these little friends along with a little nest for them. Jay has been WAY into nests lately and Kay LOVES bird watching, so it was the perfect activity for our FIRST spring day (and the weather even cooperated!)

To make your own nest you need: yarn, a balloon, a cup to hold the balloon, elmers glue, and a bowl. {Little Project Tip:}This is an activity for older preschoolers on UP. Kay just wanted to pull it all apart (but she loved playing with the birdies-see below).
Cut the yarn into pieces-ours varied thanks to Jay's help-4-7 inches works :)

Blow up a balloon and put it inside a cup to hold it still. Then dip the yarn pieces in the glue and lay them across the balloon like this:

We made some yarn birdie eggs to go inside by dipping the yarn in the glue and then wrapping it around a finger. This works best with LONG pieces of yarn.

The nest takes about 24 hours to dry completely. My camera ran out of battery before the final product was done. I'll put a photo up later...sorry! HERE IT IS!


To make some birdie friends you need: pom poms (different sizes are fun-the big ones were our favorite), googily eyes, a few colors of felt, a pipe cleaner, and hot glue gun. {Little Project Tip:} This is not an activity for young kids to make, due to the hot glue.  But if they aren't so little that they will eat these little friends, they will love to play with them-mine did for days!
  This is our birdie family:

This photo was before Jay insisted that they have feet, "so they can fly." We had a little bird anatomy lesson after that comment.
I used hot glue to put the googily eyes on.  The wings are just small pieces of felt.  The beak works best if you cut out a diamond piece and put a little hot glue in the middle and close it to look like a beak before you hot glue it on.
To make the feet (see above) you just bend part of the pipe cleaner into an "M" shape to look like 2 feet and then cut the remainder off.  Hot glue under the pom poms.  The pipe cleaners help the birdies stand up better.

Playtime with the birdies-a total success! Watch them fly!


If you don't have a need for a little birds nest at your place, check out this link for how to do the same technique and turn them into baskets.


I also saw these photos on Jordan Ferney and LOVED them and thought of my Dad, Mr. Master Gardner. Our daffodils just bloomed and now I'm looking for tulips! Aren't these fields breathtaking!?



Happy Spring with a Happy Little Project!

5 comments:

kw said...

I love the nest idea! We are going to have to do that, too. I am following your blog. We love it!

Stacy said...

We made these birds today and my kids LOVED it! They are playing with them right now. Thanks for a cute idea.

Amanda @ www.kiddio.org said...

Hey Jedda, I've had this post bookmarked, and I was wondering if you might enter it in my kid-craft Jamboree...please? It's such a great spring project :)

Jamboree details are at:

http://www.kiddio.org/2009/03/announcing-kid-craft-jamboree.html

Or go here to sign up:

http://www.kiddio.org/2008/01/jamboree-1-submission-form.html

Hope to see you! Thanks :)

Amanda @ www.kiddio.org

katef said...

SO cute!
I just love the nests!
and wow those photos of the fields in bloom are amazing!

Jenny Bay said...

I actually used this fuzzy bird craft for a preschool piano camp, and I blogged about it and linked to you. Thanks for the cute idea!!
http://theteachingstudio.blogspot.com/2011/03/introducing-curved-fingers-to-young.html

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