Bird Theme: Round 1 (17 months old)
The Little Guy has been enjoying watching the birds from our big bay window, so I thought a bird unit might be in order! We kept this themed unit up for seven days, but probably could have taken it down after five.
Books
It was pretty tough to find board books that I loved for this unit, but here are the bird themed books we used:
Birds: Feathers, Eggs, and Beaks (Smithsonian Kids First Discovery Books)
The pictures are gorgeous and while a bit wordy for 18 months, he’ll grow into the text and be able to learn from this for years.
Gorgeous illustrations take us through the life cycle of a bird, and with only a single word on each page, it’s as though the reader is invited to talk about the illustrations.
Baby's First Book of Birds & Colors
Beautiful illustrations of birds made this color book fit in with the theme seamlessly.
This is a carryover from our farm unit, but chickens are certainly birds, so here it is. The illustrations are almost childish which I really didn’t like at first, but the more we read it the more it seems like a nice bit of variety compared to the photographs and realistic illustrations.
Fine Motor
We used these Hape twistable wooden blocks to help him develop his twisting skills, but they were ultimately just frustrating for him. I’m going to pull these from the rotation for a few weeks and see if he’s ready for them later on.
Shapes and Posting
Little Guy had a blast with posting the shapes into the box and working on his shape puzzle. The box seemed to be more challenging for him than the puzzle, but he would happily work on both of them for 10-20 minutes at a time. In addition to being great shape/matching practice, they presented a nice opportunity to talk about colors.
Stacking/Nesting
Plastic stacking/nesting cups may not be on your standard Insta-sorri shelf, but they’re what we have and they’re just fine. These provide a great chance to talk about colors and sizes, in addition to their obvious stacking and nesting capabilities.
Math
At 17 months, “math” for us is really just counting and working on basic number recognition. I made simple two part puzzles for 1-3 with images of birds to fit the theme. Did we nail it in seven days? No, and that’s ok. Grab a free copy of this printable from the Free Printables section below.
Matching
Ok, there’s a lot of matching in this unit, but I specifically made two part puzzles with a goldfinch, bluejay, and cardinal to try to focus on primary colors. I noticed that the laminated cardstock was challenging for Little Guy to pick up off of the hard floor, but was somewhat easier on the carpet. For younger kiddos, I would recommend gluing the uncut pictures to an old cereal box or shipping box and then cutting them in half to make them a little easier to grab. Keep scrolling to get to the free printable section and grab your copy.
Free Printables
Click the links below to get the free printables for this unit.
Need more inspiration?
Click here
for more Montessori inspired bird materials
