Rounding up bird activities from the week with free bird mirror image worksheet downloads (scroll to the bottom).
Recently we had a big heatwave and many birds and insects died of the heat. My husband brought a baby bird home after seeing that it’s brothers and sisters had died in the heat.
The kids I work with loved hearing the story of Bobby our foster bird and seeing short videos of her feeding and learning to fly.
Bird House!
Thank you to sweetcharli.com for the bird house template. (Note the roof is as long and wide as the middle section plus side panels).
For some kids with poor coordination and hand strength I have them cut out big broad areas and I cut out details. This helps to grade the activity so they can feel successful.
I also help hold the craft for things like glue and tape. We used tape to reinforce the glue that wasn’t holding it.
Link for the bird house template:
http://www.sweetcharli.com/2013/07/paper-bird-houses-whimsical.html
More Crafts for Visual Motor Skills
Bird binoculars: https://10minutesofqualitytime.com/bird-watching-binoculars-craft/
Bird Origami: RedTedArt.com for the bird origami instructions. This is an easy oragami project.
Something More Physical..
Sturdy Birdy: The balance game
This game is a sweet balance game. You roll the dice to see how many seconds you need to stand. This comes with bean bags you can place on your arm as well depending on what you roll.
My favorite reflex to work for balance before games like this is the babinski reflex #MNRI. You can really see kids wake up their feet and do one leg balances for longer!
This game is also good if you have some balance goals want to do something fun for a goal check.
Make your own version of this game by having pictures of balance poses and rolling a dice to see how many seconds you need to stand.
I love how one therapist said that she has her older kids do these activities on the boss ball.
Scaffolding tip: grade the challenges in advance by selecting easier to more difficult poses and line them up to give kids a feeling of success.
You may need to shorten the challenge by including only 6 poses so kids can get to a good ending point. The game has you line tall the poses up (the winner gets to the end) which ends up being too many poses.
Or you could have the kids pull some cards from a stack of poses you have preselected.
Bird Mirror Image Worksheets
Working on mirror images is a fun way to improve visual closure skills (the ability to see a whole image or shape from parts).
It is also great to use the whole brain and work on visual neglect if there is any present.
If one side of the brain needs strengthening, mirror images are a wonderful way to challenge both sides.
Get your download below!