Next: N

Yesterday and today, we have been learning all about the letter N, nests, and Noah's ark. We have learned that "God takes good care of me" by providing for us and protecting us, just like a mother bird does for her baby birds in the nest.

We made nest-shaped badges with our words to remember written on them: God takes good care of me.

Today we read the story of Noah and the ark, and how God took good care of Noah's family and all the animals on the ark. We then created an ark picture using pom-poms, cotton balls, pipe cleaners, stickers, and animal crackers. If you look closely, you'll even see that the dove sticker has a tiny little leaf glued to it's mouth, representing the olive branch from the Bible passage.

A lesson wouldn't be complete without a fun themed snack to go with it! For our nest theme, we enjoyed eating "Dove" nests, made from pretzels, chocolate syrup, and Dove chocolates for the eggs. Not exactly the most healthy snack, but mmmmm!

My kids are kind of on a book-making kick right now, so after reading "A House Is a House for Me" by Mary Ann Hoberman, which is a fun and creative book describing all kinds of different houses (i.e. a jar is a house for jam, and mitten is a house for a hand), we came up with some house ideas of our own and made them into a house-shaped book.

Noah's Book

A shell is a house for a turtle

A hill is a house for an ant

A lake is a house for a fish

A tree is a house for apples

Madison's Book

A hive is a house for a bee

A lake is a house for a fish

A cloud is a house for the rain

A tent is a house for a camper

In keeping with the home theme, we created these little hanging houses from craft sticks and construction paper. (idea from www.makelearningfun.com)

We spent some time talking about how birds make their nests and the types of materials they use. So we tried out our own nest-building skills. I emphasized the point that it's amazing how birds only use their beaks and their feet for building their nests, while we were able to use our hands and shovels for building our nest.

Our completed nest!

Right after building our nest, we were enjoying some free time in the beautiful sunshine, and this bird happened to fly by and perch directly above us on a low tree branch. The kids excitedly called up to it, "Hi little bird! We made a nest for you!" The bird didn't seem interested in our nest, however.

We read "Annie and Snowball and the Cozy Nest" by Cynthia Rylant and made our foam lowercase "n" nest. (idea from http://totallytots.blogspot.com/)

The kids also did a dot to dot page, creating the uppercase "N" and lowercase "n"

(found on http://www.printactivities.com/Theme-Printables/Alphabet-Letter-Printables.html)