{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 :)

Learning At Breakfast

This morning while eating his breakfast, Max got all excited. 
He said, “Mommy, come and see!  My cereal turned into a FIVE!”

Sure enough – it did!

We both admired his fun little discovery before he finished his breakfast.  I was even more impressed than Max, though, because I had no clue that he recognized the number FIVE!

He’s an amazing counter, but he’s been struggling with number recognition…or at least ‘not caring’ about number recognition.  It’s funny – you just never know what might inspire your child to learn! :)

MFW K Unit 4 – Aa Apple

{CLICK HERE} to view the rest of our MFW K unit posts.

{CLICK HERE} to view our post explaining WHY we chose MFW K for our family.

Alex is 4 years, 9 months/Max is 37 months

We learned that “If I stay in Jesus, I will have much fruit.”
Our letter is Aa (apple).

The biggest apple we’ve ever seen!

PRE-KINDERGARTEN
BOOKS

I have to admit that Alex did NOT like “How To Make An Apple Pie”.  He obediently sat & listened, but it was obvious that he didn’t care for the book one bit. 

Now,  “Grasshopper On The Road” was a different story.  Alex giggled and giggled at the worm in the apple chapter.  Just be warned – there are two words in the first chapter that we don’t use in our home (stupid & dummy).  I replaced those words with silly and goofy.

VIDEO

I’d never heard the Johnny Appleseed song before, but we found a cute version on YouTube.

watching Johnny Appleseed


CALENDAR TIME

  

BIBLE

This week we talked about the fruit that “grows” on us – the fruit of the Spirit.  We paid attention every day to how we showed (or didn’t show) these “God Fruits” in our actions and attitudes.  MFW K manual includes Bible verses and short paragraphs to read to your child throughout the week.

TACTILE LETTER PRACTICE

Wikki Stix

Salt Box – 4s

PHONICS & HANDWRITING We’ve made our own larger handwriting pages for now because
Alex just isn’t ready for the smaller size of the MFW sheets.

Alex’s As were WONDERFUL!  His 4s…well, they need a little help ;)

 
coloring & cutting his A picture cards

stamping what starts with A, crossing out the ones that don’t start with A

   

Aa Apple “Maze” from education.com
He had trouble catching on, but he was a pro by the time he completed the page :)
 

Letter Sort

MATH

The manual instructs you to buy a large variety of apples for sorting, graphing, and baking.
Our grocery store didn’t have a large variety.  They had large apples, though:

sorting by size:

We needed yellow, red, and green apples for the graph.  Our store only had granny smith…nothing yellow, nothing else that was green.  I scrambled for a graphing activity, and I decided to just make one.  Alex LOVED LOVED LOVED it!

After cutting the apples, Alex had to glue them in the correct row.  When all the apples were glued, he answered the questions at the bottom of the page.  He was very proud of this!

I don’t have this online, but I can e-mail it to anyone who would like it…
eventually I’ll get caught up in putting files online :)

Cuisenaire Rods
Alex is getting so quick at picking the right sized block for each spot!
 
SCIENCE

Hmmm…I guess reading about apple orchards is our science for the week.  Alex did learn about how bees help in the pollination process.  We also cut open apples & found the “star” of seeds inside.

Alex & I took a “field trip” to the grocery store to see the variety of sizes, colors, and names of all the apples.  He hand selected apples of all different varieties, and we did an “apple taste test” to see how God made each variety just a little different.  That’s in a separate post; you can link to it below in the next paragraph.

We made applesauce to learn about the process of heat turning apples into sauce.   

 

ART

We had an “apple fun day” when Grace was over.  CLICK HERE to read more about it in a separate post.  (These words want to be underlined, and I can’t make it go away! :/
GAME

Alex & I played this Roll & Cover game using smarties as our apples.
You can e-mail me if you’d like it.
The goal is to be the first one to fill your basket with “apples” –
which can be M&Ms, smarties, red beads, etc.

  

TOT SCHOOL

(Max is 37 months)

Just for the record, I *offer* these activities to my little ones.  I  *NEVER NEVER* force a 3 year old to sit down and do “worksheets”.  Max is free to play or do his own thing.  I encourage puzzles, hands-on activities, etc…and he can do whatever paperwork interests him. 

This week was tricky, as Max was tired & cranky by the time we did school each afternoon.  He ended up napping every day during school time, but we kept him up an extra half hour to get a few things acccomplished on Friday:

Color Sorting cut & paste

 

Tracing letter A in 4 different colors, then hanging it on the wall.
He then named each alphabet letter we’ve worked on so far.

Max LOVES to count!
He didn’t feel like coloring, but he marked with a red crayon as he counted.
You’ll see it if you look closely ;)

 

He counted; I wrote the number. 
Afterwards, I asked him to find each number for me.
He’s still working on number recognition.

 

size sorting

counting…again ;)

handprint apple trees (his is on the left)

apple taste test, making applesauce, apple art
(Separate Post: CLICK HERE)

We may be linking up with the following blogs: