Tape, Trees, Twigs...and the letter "T"

I can't imagine a better time of year to talk about the letter "T" and trees, tape, and twigs.  What a perfect example of springtime than to be able to see a birds nest built with twigs up close!

Let me back up a bit so that no one thinks we robbed a momma bird of her little babes!!  Over the past winter and early spring a friendly wood pecker decide that the side of our house was the perfect place to display his expertise.  Night and day we could hear him drilling holes in the siding of our house. It sounded like a jack hammer in the walls, especially at 5am!  But, not quite knowing what to do, we waited him out, figuring he would tire and move on...that he did.  However, other critters opportunistically commandeered the space and took up residence.  Specifically, robins...  Once the little eggs hatched the chirping in the walls became quite LOUD...at...all...hours...of ...the...night...  At this point a very nice man came out of professionally removed the nests, fixed the holes in the siding and in the process allowed our little preschoolers to have a peak at the downy covered babies.  We looked at the nest and observed all the twigs intertwined together.  We talked about how mother birds build their nests with spit, dirt, twigs, and weeds.  We talked about the importance of trees keeping the babies safe from animals that might hurt them.  We listened to them chirp and watched them wiggle around the nest.  We talked about how the momma feeds her babies and then the hunt for worms was ON!  This was a great introduction to our letter "T", tape, twigs, and trees study and the children were EXCITED!  We were so thankful for the time we were allowed to see these babies up close (careful not to touch) until they were place in a location safe and close to their original "hole in my wall" habitat. 

We will also report that the mother found the babies and immediately began her care for them again...

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Our "babies" the man who came to move the nest needed boxes to keep the nest safe and secure during transport. I brought him the big box and the "Hello Kitty" box (we have a lot of girls around here and Hello Kitty is IT!) He thought I was being sarcastic and literally laughed out loud at how "appropriate" that box was! I, being a bit slow on the joke, didn't get what he meant until MUCH later....yep..Hello Kitty! (not really, the babies are safe!!)

Here we were collecting twigs and trees to use as our painting utensils for a later project. We noticed the different shapes of the leaves, heart, round, long, short, big, small, smooth, rough, dark and light green, fuzzy and soft. The leaves gave us LOTS of opportunity for sensory vocabulary building.

Children LOVE tape and we made several long and short strips for them to remove and use to attach their twigs together.

Here we are using our evergreen paint brushes...

We began our study on trees by looking at what was under the ground...roots... We dug for the tree roots and found LOTS around one specific tree. This picture is of us just starting out.

Eureka! Our tree roots. We discussed that the finer roots are for eating vitamins from the dirt (they understand vitamins since most of them take them each day) and how they get their drinks from the dirt too.

We discussed the color green extensively. We painted these handprint trees with popsicle stick trunks.

We made small, medium and large "t" twigs.

At the end of the week we made large tree pictures.  We used only the materials we had found from the trees at painting utensils.  We imprinted tree bark, leaves, and twigs on our papers and used the evergreen branches as paintbrushes. 

Natural play...and why it's important

"Children learn by constructing their own knowledge about the world, not by memorizing facts." (Piaget 1962).  Getting children out to play is not an effort to take a break from them, but rather a very important part of their education.  Digging for worms, finding the bugs, roots, and different types of rocks in the ground and the discovery of birds, bushes, growing plants, nests and grasses are all a necessary element of child development. I have attached a link to a long, but good article in the importance of nature for children.  Click on the title below to direct you to this informative article by fellow Kansas Citian, Randy White

Young Children's Relationship with Nature:  
Its Importance to Children's Development & the Earth's Future by Randy White