Refreshed and relaxed from taking yesterday off to do absolutely nothing, here we are, Wednesday. Let’s be having you. When I say we did nothing yesterday, I truly mean it. No one got dressed. No one saw a hairbrush. We watched an amount of Scooby Doo that could have had us confused for sophomore stoners. Lunch involved spaghettios and after the kids went to bed I crashed with the tv still on, and woke up at 4am to find I’d not even taken off my glasses. To some it looks like the worst most chaotic day ever, to us it was blissful. However, all vacations, however brief, have to end. I’ll probably write a blog post about the packages we receive from my parents in law (the reasons we took the whole day off in the first place). But for now, just know that we have some fascinating new toys from 1995 to play with, once I’ve sanitized them all!
For the craft you will need
- Paper or cardstock in white, yellow, red, black and blue
- pencil or pen to draw nostrils
- Glue stick/glue gun
- Scissors
- Sticks from the yard (optional)
I saw the CUTEST vulture activity online on the weekend. I knew the moment I saw it that I wanted to make it one of our crafts for bird week. The tutorial I followed is linked below. In her version you need an old CD and her parts are felt not card stock. I adapted it heavily for our needs/what we had at home, and I feel it was just as good as the original.
I adapted the activity level for both William and Teddy. For William I had the individual parts of the vulture drawn on the card, and he cut them all out himself. For Teddy I had cut out the wings, beak and face, and Teddy was only responsible for cutting out the white circle for the body. He was a LOT more successful and speedy than I thought he would be, so next time I’ll definitely give him a little more to cut out. I had already glued a rectangle onto each blue backing piece of paper. This was for the kids to write their untrue facts when we were done. I then let them glue their own pieces together on the paper, draw their nostrils on, and glue on their google-y eyes. William actually asked me if they had to have two eyes, or if they could choose as many as they liked (Teddy’s 7 eyed shark has left a long lasting imprint on us all!) and I said I wanted 2. Yes I know I know. I’m stifling their creativity. Honestly it’ll be a super thing for them to bring up to their therapist in 20 years, today, I was putting my foot down.
Whilst I dealt with little Arth, who was having his own private meltdown because I wouldn’t let him into the deck to pour the dogs water bowl all over himself, I let the boys hunt for sticks. This part of the craft was completely randomly added in last minute. If you don’t have sticks/don’t want sticks/ have a stick phobia, then skip it entirely. If you need to get your kids out of the house for a little, so you can take a deep breath and do something else that needs to be done, go with the stick idea. The real beauty of sending the kids to go and find ANYTHING, is that if you need more time, when they come back you can say it’s not quite what you were looking for, and send them back out. What I hadn’t bargained for was that once they had their sticks William insisted that he had to have vulture feet to grip the branch. I had no template or plan for this. So I told him that was fine. As long as he drew and cut out his own. That’s why me and Teddy just have floating vultures, and William, always the pragmatist, has a vulture has the anatomy to cling to the stick.
Normally we go straight from craft into something more academic. However today, once our vultures were done, we took a break. The kids were having a bit of a restless time, and I decided that 30 minutes playing with anything they wanted would help them refocus.
Today, once we regrouped, was all about math. Teddy did an absolutely awesome counting chicken sheet, that I found online. It’s was laid out very clearly, and he absolutely loved it. I knew he’d like counting all the chickens, but I was pleasantly surprised that he also loved writing the numbers in the boxes. I think all the tracing with expo markers is really paying off.
Once he was done with his chicken counting I gave him some nests I had printed with different numbers on them. Luckily for Teddy it’s mid May and I’ve still not cleared away the Easter stuff. So I gave him a bowl of faux speckled eggs and let him count out however many each nest needed.
William is currently working on bar graphs and tally marks for math. He works very well individually, but tends to rush to join us if he thinks Teddy is doing something more entertaining. Luckily he decided counting out the eggs onto nests was beneath him, so he focused very carefully on his bar graphs. His confidence is quite high now with his math, he’s finding it very manageable, so I think I’m going to try introducing some new topics in the next few weeks. 90% of what I cover with him are recaps of things he has already learned. To keep him engaged this summer I’m going to change that, and actually sit down and do some mini lessons. Or maybe I’ll tell myself I’m going to do that, and actually just parent with Disney + during June. The jury is still out on which direction this is all going to take! Perhaps we should be taking bets on how long I can keep up educating before I just let them run around the yard covered in dirt for the rest of the summer.
Tomorrow we are going to be introducing you all to our birds nest, and the reason we are doing this entire week on birds. I’m going to try and take some close up pictures, and maybe get a step stool out to see if there are any eggs inside yet. We’re going to be making bird feeders in the hopes that we will become the trendy neighborhood hang out for song birds.
LINKS AND SOURCES TO RESOURCES
- Craft: V is for Vulture craft
- Read: Bird book collection
- Educate: Numbered nests Bar graphs and line plots
- Watch: Wild Krattz – feathered friends
Raising Truffles 