Dr. Suess ~ Virtual Book Club for Kids

February's artist for the Virtual Book Club for Kids was Dr. Suess. We have read several Dr. Suess books this year, and were trying to decide which book we wanted to use with our activities. We thought about doing Green Eggs and Ham. But, when the kids saw Fine Feathered Friends, by Tish Rabe, we decided to use it instead. No, technically it's not a book by Dr. Suess, but it is from the Cat in the Hat's Learning Library collection. So, we went with it.

We are currently studying birds. We have done some lessons in Apologia's Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day, so decided to move ahead and study their habitats and nests.

About this same time we learned that our Homeschool Co-op was going to be having a Geography/Science/Arts Fair, and we came up with the idea of each of the kids making a habitat diorama for the bird of their choice. Brynne chose the Cardinal and Eli chose the American Robin, since those are both birds that frequent our yard.

I found a great lesson by 4H about habitats and nesting called "Wildlife is all Around Us, Book 3 - Summer", and it included information about the American Robin. I just pulled information from the internet on the cardinal and added it to the chart.

First the kids painted the insides of their dioramas. Brynne painted hers as a winter scene and Eli painted his as a spring scene.

Then we added the items for their habitat ... a pine "bush" for the Cardinal and a green leafy tree for the American Robin.

Next it was time to make the nests. We wanted them to be authentic to the type of bird, so we studied about the types of nests in our Apologia book and then used the 4H materials to plan our nests. The kids gathered items from the yard that their bird would use for a nest. We hot glued Brynne's together. But, for Eli's, we used mud as the adhesive. And it WORKED! (I told Brynne we could try to glue hers together with spit, like some birds do, but she wasn't too into that.)

Then they made the proper number of eggs with playdough in the appropriate colors and the final items for their dioramas were the birds themselves.

They each wrote about their bird, habitat, nest, and eggs in a small report and attached it to their  completed projects to enter into the Fair.

It was a great project, and I was so proud of how hard they worked on it!

March's author is Julia Donaldson. We have a GREAT book picked out and some FUN projects! We'll be working on that book after our Florida trip.

I am also linking up our Fine Feathered Friends study at Read-Aloud Thursday with Amy at Hope is the Word.