B is for Birds

Letter B's unit study has been slow going.  We have been dealing with a lot of sickness around here, plus we took a week long trip to my parents' house after starting this lesson.  However, we have finally finished it and are ready to move on to the next letter...Mm.

Ella worked in her Get Ready for the Code book. We allow this book to dictate the letter order we are going in.

I also flipped through Ella's other preschool workbooks and pulled out any bird themed pages in them for her to work on.  This gives a fun variety to her worksheets.

When we were at my parents' house, we sat on their back porch and did a little bird watching.

This little guy goes to my parents' house every day to be fed.  He LOVES raw turkey bacon.  The girls enjoyed feeding him.

While we were at my parents' house, the girls made the classic pinecone bird feeders.

They enjoyed this messy project A LOT!

We didn't remember to bring string for this project, so we took the bird feeders outside and laid them on the back porch.  We had intended to hang them up once my mom got home, but we never got a chance to do that.  I regret not having my camera more handy.  Little brown birds came by the dozens and ate all the seeds off of these pinecones.  We were happy that we had laid them on the ground where they were easily accessible.  It was awesome to watch, but I am sad I didn't get any pictures.

Once we got back to our own home, we made Cheerios bird feeders (an idea I got from Melissa several years ago.  Thanks!)  They are made simply by threading Cheerios onto pipe cleaners, twisting closed the pipe cleaners and hanging them on a tree.  I think Arin enjoyed this project the most and Ella enjoyed snacking on the cereal.  She wanted to make it into a cereal necklace for herself :)

I pulled out some of the activities that I used with the girls a few years ago when Arin was working on the letter Bb.  Some of these were repeats that Ella had done before and some were new to her because they were things that Arin had worked on in the past.  Ella worked on upper- and lower-case recognition.

Ella and I played a bird themed memory game, while Little Bit watched from the sidelines :)

For our final bird themed learning activity, Ella worked on her counting skills and number recognition.