Bird Nest activities

This was one of the children's favorite days, I think. There are a lot of resources on building models of birds nests using various things. If it had been Spring, we might have attempted building with some actual nest materials (twigs, grasses, etc.) but there was no way we were venturing out in 3-degree weather to hunt for them. So, I decided we'd build life-sized nests using things around the house. Two of the children got to be the parents and two got to be the babies, and they took turns building the main types of nests: cup, pendulum, spherical, platform, and cavity. (There is lots of information about nests and a worksheet about the types, here.) I let them use anything they could find around the house (within reason). Once the nest was built, I let the parents feed their babies by dropping a chocolate chip into their open beak. You would have thought this was the best idea EVER. The children begged to build nests every day for the rest of the unit. :)

Hungry birdies---cup nest

Spherical nest

Pendulum nest

Platform nest

(What the platform nest looked like underneath---very accurate)

Cavity nest

There are tons of cool videos of birds building nests. Here are a bunch we enjoyed:

Robins with their babies

Time lapse of a nest being built

Hummingbird nest (so tiny!)

This one was our favorite---SO amazing!---the weaver bird

For lunch that day, we had these "eggs in a nest" (Fried eggs inside toast)---I made the cut-out insides into little birdies. And I NEVER do cute things with our food, so the children thought it was very special. :)

And Sebby (on his own) made this sweet little nest---the mama and the baby robin come out of their pockets, so the mama can swoop down and feed the baby. So cute!