Yellow Chirping Chicks and Feathered Hen Egg Holders

*This post contains affiliate links. Please see my Disclosure Page for details.

Easter is only a month away so last week we decided to get a jump on our Easter crafting. We made two chicken crafts using egg carton. These were super simple and tons of fun.

Egg Carton Chirping Chicks

These little yellow chicks are so much fun to make and make a great candy holder!

Materials:

-Egg carton cups

-Yellow paint

-Orange and yellow construction paper or craft foam

-Feathers

-Wiggly eyes

-Glue

-Scissors

-Tape

-Paintbrush

What to do:

1. Cut two cups from an egg carton and trim them to smooth out the tops.

2. Paint the cups yellow and let them dry.

3. Tape the two cups together on the inside using a piece of tape. See photo above.

4. Cut a beak and feet out of the construction paper or craft foam and glue onto the chick.

5. Glue on wiggly eyes.

6. Glue on feathers for the wings.

7. Feed your chirping chick a tasty treat (jellybeans, etc). 

Egg Carton Hen Egg Holders

These little hens are so adorable, easy to make and can hold safely hold your decorated Easter eggs or plastic eggs.

Materials:

-Egg cartons

-Wiggle eyes

-Yellow and red craft foam

-Feathers

-Paint (white, brown)

-Glue

-Scissors

-Paintbrush

-Decorated Easter egg or plastic egg

What to do:

1. Cut the egg cartons, the edges of egg carton work best. Shape the body with scissors to round out rough edges. See photo above for cutting details. 

2. If you wish paint your hen white, brown etc. We opted to keep ours natural.

3. Cut a beak and waddle out of craft foam and glue them onto the hen.

4. Glue on the wiggle eyes.

5. For the wings, tail and crest glue feathers onto the sides and back of the hen.

6. Place a decorated Easter egg or plastic egg into your feathered hen egg holder!

What kind of fun Easter crafts have you been making?

Linking up with: #GetYourCraftOn, Ben and Me

FreeBEE Friday Link Up - Flower Unit Study

*This post contains affiliate links. Please see my Disclosure Page for details.

The first day of Spring was yesterday! Is anyone else as excited as I am that Spring is here? Last week I shared some Spring unit study resources with you. Well this week the kids wanted to learn about flowers so today I have flower and tree resources for you. We had a blast learning about flowers, trees and of course xylem. One flower we learned about while on one of our nature walks was the Bradford Pear Tree flower bud....which may look pretty (bottom right photo above) but smells awful (like rotten fish).

Flower Printables:
Here is my newest journal page which of course is a flower journal page. You can also download it by clicking on the image below.

-There are several great FREEBIES right now on the A Journey Through Learning FREEBIE page including Summer, Easter, Spring and more. Be sure to also check out the $2 Express Lapbooks.
-Flower lapbook from Homeschool Share.
-Plants and Flowers lapbook from 1+1+1=1

-Learning Little Lovies $1 Plan A Garden mini unit.
-2 Teaching Mommies has a Flower Unit Study for Pre-K- 2nd grade.
-Discovery Education has several plant studies with lesson plans for K-8th.
-Ellen McHenry’s site has an 8 lesson Botany study with a coordinating lapbook.
-Living Montessori Now has an elementary leaf unit and lots of other plant related activities and studies.
-Homeschool Helper has a plant lapbook study.
-Have Fun Teaching plant worksheets.
-CurrClick has lots of free and inexpensive flower resources like these parts of a flower cards, plants and plant growth (10 cents),

Flower crafts and food:
-Paper plate sunflower, toilet paper tube flower and tissue paper flower crafts.

-Pipe cleaner flower craft.
-Pasta flower craft.
-Paper muffin cup flower craft.
-Flower strawberry snack.
-10 fun healthy flower snacks.

Science Experiment:
To show the kids how xylem works we did a fun experiment. This can be done with cabbage, celery or carnations. Don't forget to download your FREE Science Experiment Journal Page it will come in handy.

Materials:
-3-4 glass cups
-Water
-Celery, cabbage, carnations
-Food coloring

Directions:

1. Fill the cups about three-quarters of the way to the top with water.
2. Add a few drops of food coloring to each cup (different color in each cup). Make sure that the color of the water is nice and dark for best results. Stir until the color is evenly distributed throughout.
3. Cut about 1 inch off the bottom of the celery stalk and place the celery in the cup with the leaves sticking up.
4. Several times throughout the day check the stalks. Observe how the leaves are changing. Let the stalk sit overnight.

The next day try some of these activities and discussion questions.

• What happened to your celery stalk overnight?
• How do you know that the water reached the top of the plant (celery stalk)?
• Remove the celery stalk from the cup and cut another inch off the bottom. Look for the small circles at the bottom of the stalk that are the color of the food coloring you used. (These  little circles are the xylem, the tubes that carry water up the plant.) Continue cutting the celery stalk at one inch  intervals to follow the path of the colored water all the way up the stalk of the celery to the leaves.

Videos:

Here is a Flowers and Trees YouTube channel I made.


eBooks/Audio Books and Apps:
-This awesome Flower Audubon App (Android) is free quite a bit so add it to your wishlist if you don't want to pay $2.99.

-A book of fruits and flowers - Kindle

Great Books And Other Resources On Flowers (Amazon widget may not load on a mobile device):



Pinterest Board:
For even more ideas check out my Flower Pinterest Board.

I hope you find these resources useful. If you ever have any questions feel free to leave me a comment or email me. Also be sure to follow my Facebook Page where I post FreeBEEs daily.

Welcome to a New Year of FreeBEEs. Every Friday I will share a great list of educational FreeBEE resources. PLUS...there's the added bonus of this being a monthly link up...where you can showcase your freebie posts or discover more amazing freebies from my blogging friends. The blogger link up will start on the first Friday of every month and end on the first day of the following month. Each month there will be a new link up. Link up anything that is educational and FREE including GIVEAWAYS!

If you have homeschool FreeBEEs to share

please link up at the bottom of this post!

You can copy the button from my right sidebar to share

somewhere on your blog.

Link up: FreeBEE Fridays with Kathy's Cluttered Mind.

Remember when it comes to FREE resources the internet and a good search engine are your best friend. Oh and a library card!

*Don't miss a single FreeBEE... Subscribe to Kathys Cluttered Mind*

Linking up with: Jay Daniel 4's Mom, Mama to 4 Blessings, Ben and Me, 3 Boys and a Dog

FreeBEE Friday Link Up - Spring Unit Study Resources

*This post contains affiliate links. Please see my Disclosure Page for details.

Image from FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Yippee, hooray Spring is here! Well it will officially be here on March 20th! Are your kids ready to learn about Spring? There are so many topics you can cover like seasons, frogs, birds, bugs, flowers, gardening, trees and more. Here are some FREE printables, craft ideas, eBooks and more to get you started.

Spring printables:
-A few months ago I started make journal and notebooking pages for my children. I am offering all of these for FREE to my readers. Be sure to visit my FREE Journal and Notebooking page to snag them. There are several that will help you with Springtime learning like butterfly, arachnid, scientific and rock observation journal pages and a weather graphing page.

-There are several great FREEBIES right now on the A Journey Through Learning FREEBIE page including St. Patrick's Day, Easter, Spring and more. Be sure to also check out the $2 Express Lapbooks.
-Birds: Robins Mini Helper on CurrClick.
-Spring nature study download.
-The Teachers Guide has lots of great Spring resources.
-Bug and butterfly resources from one of my past blog posts.

-ABC Teach Spring worksheets.
-Spring lapbook printables and ideas.
-I have several blog posts with bird unit study resources.
-Ben and Me Blog has a great list of Spring themed lapbooks PLUS a Spring scavenger hunt printable.
-Homeschool Share tree unit study and lapbook.
-Lady bug lifecycle and Spring Math from Teachers Pay Teachers.
-Bird unit study and flower unit study from Future Flying Saucers.

-Spring activity pack from Marriage, Motherhood and Missions.

Spring Crafts and Food:

-Check out this cute butterfly craft we made a couple of years ago. It's perfect for Spring.
-Yarn nest craft from Marriage, Motherhood and Missions.
-Spring forest from Vintage Indie.
-Birds nest salt dough craft and caterpillar crafts from Craftulate.
-Bug buddies puppets from LalyMom.

Sunflowers craft:
Materials:
-Yellow paint
-Paper plate
-Brown construction paper
-Green straw or pipe cleaner
-Scissors
-Glue
-Paint brush

What to do:
1) Paint the paper plate yellow on one side. Allow it to dry.
2) Make petal shapes on the backside of the paper plate and cut them out. For younger kids you can just cut slits to make it easier.
3) Crumble a small piece of brown construction paper and glue it in the center of the flower.
4) Glue a green straw or pipe cleaner to the back.

Videos:
Check out our Spring YouTube Playlist.

)
eBooks/Audio Books and Apps:
-Plant A Seed And Watch It Grow - Kindle
-Seedtime - Kindle
-Spring Is Here - 10+ Spring Stories for Kids - Kindle

Watching Wrens - Are You Ready For Spring?

*This post contains affiliate links. Please see my Disclosure Page for details.

Spring is finally in the air! This will be our first Spring and Summer with a backyard and we are just a tad bit excited. I am pretty sure I will loose my children for hours each day, but luckily they are exploring and learning so I don't mind. With the nature bag in hand they set out to learn about bugs, birds, bunnies, squirrels, rocks, minerals, trees, leaves and more. They set traps, try to start fires (I'm very happy they haven't succeeded yet), go on archaeological digs, climb trees, build tents and play with animal friends.

So have you been watching the birds get ready for Spring in your backyard? For the past couple of weeks we have been having a blast watching them. We have a sliding glass door leading  to the backyard so we can sit at the kitchen table and easily watch the birds, chipmunks, squirrels and bunnies eat from our bird feeder. Armed with our trusty nature apps from Audubon we are always ready to learn about our backyard animal friends. We have seen Cardinals, Brown Thrashers, Blue Jays, Carolina Wrens, Woodpeckers and a few others so far this year.

Here is a video that I finally finished editing, it's from last Summer. We had the privileged to watch a Carolina Wren family build their home, lay their eggs and send off 4 little baby Wrens into the World.


For more great bird nature study resources check out my previous bird posts and Audubon.

Also be sure to follow our Bird Unit Study Pinterest Board:




And check out these great books and resources on Amazon:

Wildlife Wednesday - Spring Is In The Air...It's Time To Get Outdoors

Spring is in the air...or should I say pollen! You know what that means, right? Lots of outdoor learning fun. In the last two weeks changes have been taking place here in Georgia. Our brown trees and dreary days are gone. The bees are buzzing, pollen is covering everything and the trees are blooming!



We have already been on a couple of Spring nature walks and we are all happy to get out of the house (even Kelli's son was excited to get out and climb some trees during their recent visit to GA). One thing my kids and Kelli's boys love to do is collect things. Do your kids like to collect things? My kids love to bring various treasures from our nature walks indoors. We have a bug specimen board, mushroom/fungus board, nature board and bird bone board. Gwyn also has a rock collection that she keeps in a fishing tackle box. 

**Continue reading the rest of this post here and don't forget to join Wildlife Wednedsay on Creation Conversations to download your FREE nature resources like the science observation worksheet.**

Link Up:
Don't forget about the ongoing link  up where you will be able to link your creation exploration posts to  share with others. It will become another avenue full of resources and  ideas to enrich your homeschool.

Copy and paste the Wildlife Wednesday badge and place it in the post you are linking up or on your sidebar. Text links are fine to include in your post as well use this permalink: http://www.creationconversations.com/group/wildlife-wednesdays. Posts that are linked up may be pined to Pinterest. Please make sure you post the direct URL and not the URL to your homepage. 

Grab a Wildlife Wednesday badge for your blog/website: Copy and paste the graphic below -

Or grab the html code below - <center><a   href="http://www.creationconversations.com/group/wildlife-wednesdays"   target="_blank"><img alt="Wildlife Wednesdays"   src="http://i1110.photobucket.com/albums/h453/kbalman/Wildlife1.jpg"   height='125' width='125' border='0' /></a></center>

Toilet Paper Roll Flowers - Great Mothers Day Gift

We have started our unit on pollination, flowers and bats this week. Here is a little craft we made to go along with our unit study. This would be a great Mothers Day gift (so dads gather the kids and get out the craft supplies before Sunday).

Materials:
-Empty toilet-paper tube
-Ruler
-Pencil
-Kid-Friendly Scissors
-2 - Green Popsicle Sticks
-Paint
-Rose Art Tempura Painters (these are by far my favorite Rose Art product)
-Pom Poms
-Green cardstock

Optional: 
-Green paper for leaves
-Paint and Paintbrush if you don't have Tempura Painters

Instructions:

1. Draw a ring 2 inches from the edge of tube. Repeat on other end. Then draw lines every 1/2 inch for kids to cut. My kids didn't do a very good job of using the lines. Snip along each line to make petals. Fold petals back to create flower. 
2. Paint flower and let it dry. The tempura painters were great for this craft and Gwyn had a fun time creating a pretty pattern.
3. Glue two green popsicle sticks together then push them through the one end of the flowers center until it touches the other end. I added a little bit of hot glue to make sure it stayed secure.
4. Have the kids pick out their favorite color pom pom and glue it to the popsicle stick in the center of the flower.

*Disclaimer - Rose Art supplies from Mega Brand supplies us with lots of wonderful products in return for honest review and craft project how to's. I was not compensated for my review and all opinions are our own! Many of the links found on my side bars and in my blog posts are affiliate links. As a result, I might get paid money and I will most likely spend the money on homeschool supplies.

A week in the life of homeschoolers - Week 34 & Seussy Saturday Link Up - Week 4

Welcome to the Seussy Saturday Link Up. As you may know we are going crazy with Dr. Seuss this month for our homeschool unit. We will be reading EVERY single one of his books and doing worksheets,  lapbooks, crafts, fun food and more. I know there are a bunch of link ups going on for Dr. Seuss but this one will be a little different because it will last all month. So if you are having a Seusstactular time with Dr. Seuss this month be sure to link up.

Below is the button if you want to join in the fun. Just link up a post that has to do with Dr. Seuss. And I would love it if you put the button either in the post or on your sidebar if your participating.


<center><a href="http://www.kathysclutteredmind.com/search/label/Dr%20Seuss" target=”_blank”><img src="http://i1110.photobucket.com/albums/h453/kbalman/seussysaturday-1.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket" /></a></center>

So here is what A Week In Life Of A Seussy Homeschool looks like.

Saturday night the kids arrived home from their sleepover to find their Leprechaun traps empty. They didn't catch that sneaky little guy this year but he did leave them each 3 chocolate gold coins. Sunday we had fun with our Spring craft and made some cute butterflys. If you haven't seen my National Craft Month With Rose Art post be sure to check it out here. 

Monday we had a super busy day. First Gwyn had American Girl club with our homeschool group where she made another woven place mat which went along great with the 1st Kaya book. Then we headed to Rowyn's speech appointment. Afterwards we ran to the library to return some books and get our books for our April unit study which will be on South America, Chimpanzees and other primates. Then it was for some Seussy fun. We read Oh say can you seed and The Bippolo Seed and other stories. And then we planted our balcony gardens. We also examined some carpenter bees and discussed pollen (which is coating all of GA right now, my green car has turned yellow). And then Gwyn had her first official soccer practice.

Tuesday we celebrated Spring. We did a first day of Spring nature study. Discussed carpenter bees again (they are surrounding our front porch and balcony). Then the kids made their lunches, peanut butter and jelly their favorite. Afterwards we headed to Old Roswell Mill with the Adventurez in Child Rearing family. Even though we live about 2-3 miles from this wonderful place we have never been there. But after spending over 5 hrs there I can tell you we will be going back a lot more. This place is amazing. We covered History, Science, PE, Art, Phonics, Math and more on this one field trip.

Wednesday was an errand day with daddy but we did manage to sneak in a field trip at Petco. We played Mouse Trap and the kids did some Read Eggs (I cannot wait to share our review about this program with you). The kids also watched some quality educational shows on the Roku......The 3 Stooges. Rowyn helped me make our meatball sandwich dinner and bake a loaf of Tastefully Simple Beer Bread. Each kid also made their snack which went along great with the Dr Seuss Tooth book.

Thursday we hung out with the homeschool group and went to a great place in Acworth GA called DACKids. This facility has a pirate theme and features wooden forts, a large sand pit, compressed air cannons that shoot foam balls, inflatables, playhouses and slides. The staff is very nice and the facility was very clean. Unlike so many play centers DACKids has a great security procedure in place as well. The adult who registers with the child/children on arrival MUST be present upon departing; and must show their corresponding security wristbands. I also loved how inexpensive it was. We got a great deal through Groupon and got a 5 session pass for $18! Their normal fees are $7.99 per child and $4.99 for two and under. Afterwards we went to Chilis for lunch there were 5 homeschool moms and 18 kids. We were out numbered...but you would have been amazed at well behaved the 17 kids under the age of 12 were...I know we were. They were so polite, sat in their chairs, ate their food and talked among themselves. Gwyn even made a new friend.

Friday I drove the kids to Mommom's (aka Grandma's) for their sleepover. And I headed to Apologia Live (more to come on that in another blog post).

I hope you had a great month learning with Dr. Seuss. I will not be doing a link up this Saturday but we are still working on some Dr. Seuss activities and finishing up the books this week. I really didn't get in as many crafts and activities as I wanted too because of attending a convention and retreat this month....but we did have lots of fun with Dr. Seuss and the kids learned a lot about imagination, adjectives and rhyming.

YouTube Channel for March:

Pinterest Board for Dr. Seuss I also have one March - I would love it if you follow me:

Link Up:

Thanks for stopping by and linking up. 

Linking Up With:

Celebrating Spring With Rose Art

Did you know that March is National Craft Month? I'll admit I didn't and our family is big into arts and crafts. So for the next 3 weeks I will be sharing a craft project along with a how to. And we will be using a lot of Rose Art products.

Since today is the first day of Spring we decided to do a fun butterfly craft.

Materials we used:
-White Paper
-Clothes Pin
-Tissue Paper
-Jewels
-Pom Poms
-Wiggle Eyes
-Rose Art Glitter Magic Markers
-Rose Art Twist Up Crayons
-White School Glue
-Low Temp Hot Glue Gun

Instructions:
1.) Fold a piece of white paper in half and draw a heart with the bottom being flat along the fold. Cut along the lines and then open the paper. This will make the butterfly's wings.

2.) Decorate the butterfly wings. We used tissue paper, jewels, twist up crayons and glitter magic markers. The glitter magic markers from Rose Art are AWESOME. My kids absolutely loved them. They are easy to write and draw with, super sparkly and washable. I love them because they are much cleaner than regular glitter and provide a similar effect.

3.) Glue a clothes pin onto the center of the wings. Then add some pom poms onto the clothes pin. My kids choose different colors and then used a big pom pom for the head. Add some wiggle eyes and antennae using a pipe cleaner. Gwyn decided her butterfly needed needed a tongue and legs as well so she added those using pipe cleaners. We used the low temp glue gun to adhere all of these parts.

4.) The fun thing about this craft is that your completed butterfly can clip onto things like a curtain or hold a little sign which Gwyn decided to make. Her sign says, "Welcome Spring."

5.) Wash up and show off your finished project.

Fuzzy Poster Review:
I would like to share another product we received in our box of goodies. A Sun and Moon Fuzzy Poster. Gwyn immediately claimed this. She had a blast coloring in the poster and it is now hanging on her bedroom wall. This kit comes with the poster and a set of washable markers. The nice thing is that even if your child is not great at staying in the lines it doesn't matter because the black velvet will hide mistakes. These vary in price and range anywhere from $2.40-$7.98. They also come in different sizes.

 Links:
-Rose Art Website - check out the FREE coloring pages
-Rose Art Facebook
-Rose Art Twitter
-Mega Brands Website - be sure to check out the Kids Zone for fun games, wallpapers and more
-Mega Brands Facebook
-Mega Brands Twitter
-Craft and Hobby Association - National Craft Month Sponsor

Next week I will be sharing a pencil holder craft which we plan to give to our county librarians for National Library Week which is in April 8th-11th.

I decided it would be fun to also do link up. If your crafting this month please link up your posts below. This link up will be up all month so keep coming back and sharing your creativity.


*Disclaimer - I received a box of Rose Art supplies from Mega Brand in return for my honest review and a craft project how to. I was not compensated for my review and all opinions are our own! Many of the links found on my side bars and in my blog posts are affiliate links. As a result, I might get paid money and I will most likely spend the money on homeschool supplies