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The Best Nest: A Literacy and STEM Preschool Lesson

April 4, 2016 by Meg 11 Comments

This simple preschool activity brings to life P.D. Eastman’s beloved book, The Best Nest, as your child reads the book, searches for nest building material and then creates his or her own nest. It’s a fun hands-on learning experience that your child will love! Last week, our home preschool unit centered around birds. We had all sorts of fun pretending to fly like birds, making a giant nest out of blankets, learning about the parts of a bird, and making play dough birds and sticking feathers in them (see the bottom of this post for links to some of the great resources I used). My favorite activity (and Little Man’s, too) was when we made our own bird’s nests.

I’ve written before about our love of scavenger hunts, so I thought it would be fun to do a scavenger hunt to look for materials to build a nest, just like birds do.

I love taking books that we already love and making them more meaningful to my kids by connecting them to the real world. And that’s exactly what I did with this lesson. Before we headed out on our hunt, we read the book The Best Nest by P.D. Eastman. It’s a classic that I remember loving as a kid, and Little Man loves it, too. We’d read it before this activity, but this time I told him to pay special attention to what the birds use to build their nest.

The Best Nest book by P.D. Eastman

I read the book, and then we talked about the things that the birds used. We grabbed a bag, and headed outside on a walk to become birds looking for building materials.

Here are some of the materials we used:

  • straw
  • string
  • sticks
  • grass
  • pine needles
  • leaves

Once we were satisfied with our supplies (well, actually it started to rain, so we just decided we had enough), we headed home and got to work building our nest.This simple preschool activity brings to life P.D. Eastman’s beloved book, The Best Nest, as your child reads the book, searches for nest building material and then creates his or her own nest. It’s a fun hands-on learning experience that your child will love!

Little Man didn’t have a lot of patience for trying to weave together the materials into an actual, sturdy nest, but he did think it was great fun to shape it into a circle and then add Easter eggs. Seriously, this kid cannot get enough of Easter eggs! We really need another holiday to switch his focus.This simple preschool activity brings to life P.D. Eastman’s beloved book, The Best Nest, as your child reads the book, searches for nest building material and then creates his or her own nest. It’s a fun hands-on learning experience that your child will love!

If you’re working with older kids it would be awesome to challenge them to make their nest strong enough that they can pick it up and move it, or to withstand a windstorm (test their success with a hair dryer). Remember to focus on the learning process, though, and not the end result (otherwise you might end up with a meltdown over a collapsed nest).

All in all, it was a great activity for Little Man. It encompasses literacy skills and STEM exploration, which are so important. Mostly, it gave both of us a better appreciation for how HARD it is to build a nest. I’m pretty impressed with those little birdies and their architectural abilities.

Here are some links to other bird activities we enjoyed this week. Check them out!

DIY Bird Feeders
Easy DIY Bird Feeders from The Many Little Joys

The Best Nest - Bird-Feathers
Bird Feather Matching from All Things Moms

The Best Nest - worm bin2
Baby Bird Gets the Worm Sensory Bin from Modern Preschool

The Best Nest paint-feather
Feather Painting from Muchkins and Moms

This simple preschool activity brings to life P.D. Eastman’s beloved book, The Best Nest, as your child reads the book, searches for nest building material and then creates his or her own nest. It’s a fun hands-on learning experience that your child will love!

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Filed Under: Crafts & Activities, Uncategorized Tagged With: Activities, birds, Learning, Literacy, Preschool, STEM

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Emily @ My Love for Words

    April 5, 2016 at 7:16 am

    This is so sweet! I hate to admit it, but we’ve never read this book, but this looks like the perfect activity to do with my kiddos when we get it.

    Reply
    • Meg

      April 5, 2016 at 2:32 pm

      P.D. Eastman is one of my favorites for classic kids’ literature. He’s the author of Are You My Mother? and Go, Dog, Go. Thanks for stopping by!

      Reply
  2. shara parker

    April 17, 2019 at 6:45 pm

    The lesson plan for the nest does not open. It says the site cannot be reached

    Reply
    • Meg

      April 18, 2019 at 2:09 pm

      Thanks for letting me know! It’s always a bummer when good resources are removed, leaving broken links. I’ve updated the post to remove the link.

      Reply
  3. Spurwing Plover

    December 14, 2019 at 11:17 am

    Some Birds will build their nests in very odd places i have seen a nest in the O of a Wells Fargo sign or the O of a Dollar Tree Sign

    Reply

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