Family Fun's Little bird nests craft

When my eldest daughter Meadow was little (she's 20 now), we used to both love the magazine "Family Fun". I have purchased a few issues throughout the years for daycare, but haven't thought about this magazine in awhile. Today I happened to see one while grocery shopping. The new issue (here) and as soon as I saw the cover I had to buy it!

We ran home to create this
First I brought out a real nest that one of the daycare parents donated a few years ago,
so Sierra could examine it, to see how the real birds use twigs to make their nest, and then soft fur and hairs to line it. She was quite amazed.

Then she stuck some little twigs which I cut up into about 1 -1 1/2 inch pieces as we started with only a small clump of playdough. These branches have come in handy. They are from a cherry tree that someone was trimming and I asked if I could take a bunch of them for a different project I want to do, but they were perfect for this.
She used a bit of wool roving to line the nest, and made another little playdough nest. She then of course needed some playdough birds.
This was a lot of fun. Sierra had a great time observing the real nest, building her nest, and playing with her little birdies in their nest.

This magazine is chock full of all kids of wonderful ideas and as I flipped through the pages it brought back many memories.

When we moved to BC from NS when Meadow was 6. The two of us set off on our adventure and drove the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, through both Canada and The US. The whole trip was planned by reading through Family Fun magazines, and plotting out our route.

We stopped in Osh Kosh Wisconsin (yes it's a real town), we went to Mt Rushmore, a Pow Wow in South Dakota and dug for dinosaur bones at a great museum (sorry I can't remember where it was). We had a fantastic trip. We timed our trip to hit the Calgary Stampede too, and we tried to visit the West Edmonton Mall, and well we actually accidentally broke into it! I thought it was a Saturday. We drove out of our way about 6 hours to get to the mall, got a hotel, woke up early, went to the mall but the door was stuck. I thought...Saturday am, 9:30 it should be open. I gave the door a good tug and it popped open. We started to walk through one of the stores and a security guard came up to us, asked us what we were doing, said the mall was closed, and explained it was Sunday not Saturday so the mall didn't open until 11:00. Well... Let me tell you, we turned around and headed for the highway as we were supposed to be in Vancouver the next day at noon! We had a very rushed remainder of the trip and made it for before supper time so we didn't do too bad! We didn't really get to see West Edmonton Mall but we have a story we still talk about any time we are near a converstaion about that mall!

From now on this magazine is back on my watch out for list. I recommend you giving it a try to. Let me know what you think about it. I think you'll find it is a great magazine. It's all US info re places to go etc, but the activities and ideas are great no matter where you live!