Hummingbirds

You all might remember that I was hoping to put up some bird feeders and attract some birds. I bought some but haven’t gotten them out yet.

Then one day a week or so ago I had the childcare kiddos here. A couple of them were looking out the window and one started squealing about something outside the window. I walked to the window and there was a hummingbird hanging out in my flowers. Before I knew it, all of the kiddos were looking out the window watching the, now two, hummingbirds buzz around from flower to flower.

About the I remembered that I had a cute hummingbird book “Little Green” by Keith Baker. The book is perfect for toddlers or preschoolers.

The story is real simple. An artist is looking out the window and sees a hummingbird zipping around.

In each layout of the book, the hummingbird is zipping from here to there…doing curlicues, zig zagging, and flying in circles. The last page is below….

The artist in the book painted how the bird flew…in zig zags, circles, etc.

That’s when I had an idea. Here it is….I gave the kiddos some finger paint paper and finger paint. I let them paint how they wanted. I tried to tell them to paint zig zags, circles and such but that was a little above the abilities of the kids I was working with.

After the paint dried I went online and googled, “hummingbird clip art”. I found one I liked then copy/pasted that into a Word document. There I could size the bird accordingly. While I was in Word, I made a text box that said, “I painted how you flew and flew”. I printed them and cut them out.
Then I helped the kids assemble the pictures. They were so proud of these. Then we hung them on the back of the door going out to the garage. I printed the book cover so parents knew that the art was an extension to a book we were reading.

It was a really fun project. I know lots of you are grandmas and moms who have little kids from time to time. If you’re trying to share your love of birds, this might be something you’d be interested it doing too.

I love when I can come up with an idea on my own and the kiddos love it! I especially love ideas like this that all the kids no matter their age, can make and it still looks cute.

We’ve continued to watch the hummingbirds. They are often zipping around. We’ll all be so sad when they go…but then again, that will give up another chance to talk about nature and learn about migration.

If you’re interested here is a link to the book on Amazon.