{Peanut Free} Edible Nests & a Nest Craft

We’re learning about animals and their homes during MFW K’s Nn Nest week.  We seem to be falling into a routine of a Thursday fun day to do the hands-on activities.  Here’s what we did today, thanks to Pinterest and Google for providing the fun activities :)

First, we read The Best Nest by P.D. Eastman.

After that, we made edible birds nests.  The recipe in the MFW K manual uses peanut butter, which is a no-go in our house since Alex is allergic.  After some searching online, I found a perfect recipe!  You can find the recipe HERE.

It only has 3 ingredients – sweetened condensed milk, chocolate chips, and chow mein noodles.  (In case you’ve never used chow mein noodles before, there are TWO KINDS.  You don’t want the ones that look like spaghetti noodles.  You want the ones that are small, crispy sticks.  We found LaChoy chow mein noodles in the Asian aisle at our small town store.)

The kids helped with opening the can of milk and scraping it into the saucepan.  They also helped with eating pouring in the chocolate chips.  Mama did the stovetop part.

Once it was all melted and stirred, the kids poured in the chow mein noodles and stirred it all up.  Then we scooped it onto foil-lined cookie sheets and shaped it into nests.  (Max opted to watch rather than help.)

    

Once all the nests were shaped, we added candy eggs.  You can use whatever you want as eggs; we used chewy Sweetarts candies.  (For another peanut-free option, a MFW K Facebook friend shared that Sixlets are made in a peanut-free facility.)

Once that was finished, we made paper plate bird nests.  We found this on Pinterest, but the original link is HERE.  We simplified by skipping the brown paint step.  We just used dessert-sized paper plates, brown construction paper that we put through the paper shredder, popsicle sticks, google eyes, and foam sticks cut into triangles for beaks. Alex said, “Mom, I am NOT making it all perfect.  It’s not for a REAL bird, so I don’t need to cover the whole thing with pretend sticks.” 

Grace put in a little more effort :)

I have to admit that I am SUPER glad that most of these pictures don’t show the kitchen counters or living room floor.  SuperMom does NOT live here…but we do have lots of fun :)