Cardinal and Sunflower (craft project)

Since I haven't been feeling well I haven't been doing very much, including crafts with the kids.  It's been all I can do to help them with their homework or read them bedtime stories.  Mostly, I've been sleeping off the pain I'm in.  Today, I realized how much they have come to enjoy our little projects and how they were literally starving for some mom and me craft time.  I don't think these came out as great as they could have, but Nathan didn't care.  He just wanted a 'real' project to do (and not just coloring in some boring book - his words).

We ended up reading two books about sunflowers.  The first book was Sunflower House by Eve Bunting.  This was a cute book about a boy who planted sunflower seeds in a circle and ended up with a sunflower house.  He and his friends played in the sunflower house all summer and were sad to see it come to an end when the sunflowers died.  Nathan and Nicholas asked if they could have a sunflower house next summer.

The second book was Cardinal and Sunflower by James Preller.  This book is more about cardinals than the sunflowers, but it was basically about spreading sunflower seeds and watching a sunflower grow and the birds eating the seeds. 

I was planning on making one of those pinecone bird feeders too and use sunflower seeds as bird food, but I couldn't find any pinecones large enough to do this with.  We may end up doing it at some point this winter when I find some pinecones to use.  We have a family of blue jays living in one of our trees, Nathan and Nicholas are always throwing old bread at the tree to feed the birds.

Our first project was to make some cardinal puppets.  I got the idea and the printout at Danielle's Place.  We used the blue puppet craft idea and made our's red instead.  This was a simple craft to make.  We used the printout that was included (since there were four baby birds in the book, we made four puppets).  We used red craft sticks too. 

Then we made a "nest" for the baby birds.  We took a paper plate and painted it brown, cut it in half and glued some little twigs to it.  We glued the sides of the plate to a piece of paper, leaving the top and bottom open for the puppets to sit inside.

We also made a sunflower "house" we took these little yellow paper doilies that I found at the Dollar Store and glued 4 of them to a sheet of paper.  Then we made stems and leaves for the sunflowers.  We put glue in the centers and sprinkled sunflower seeds to them.  Easy, simple and fun, not to mention cheap...my kind of craft.

One of the things I love about my kids and my family is that they are always willing to help each other.  Sure, it's not always roses and sunshine, they do fight and get mad at each other, but alot of the times they simply love each other.  The other day, while I was crashed out on the couch, Anthony was doing his homework in the kitchen.  At first he helped both his brothers with their homework and while he did his, he played with Nathan.  They colored and it was so cute listening to them.  Anthony helped Nathan draw a turkey with his hand and told Nathan to color it, which he did.  Then they drew some pumpkins and Nathan sang Anthony the five little pumpkin song.  It did this mom some good to hear that, let me tell you.

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