The Last Chip

Here are all the wonderful, fun and educational activities from our February activity box, inspired by the brilliant book The Last Chip by Duncan Beedie. Many of our activities from this month have the theme of kindness running through them. Why not give them a go with your kids at home!

Binoculars

This is a great, easy craft activity to try at home with your kids that will work on the motor skills and also help them engage with nature outside your window. Talking about and learning the names of the different species of birds is great for your children and will help with their reading and writing when they get older.

Bird Feeders

Once you have your binoculars ready to spot all the birds outside, what better way to encourage some birds to visit then hanging a tasty treat outside for them. This activity is inspired by our theme of kindness and is a simple act which your children try at home in order to be able to help something else. Ours loved creating their very own bird feeders. It was great for their fine motor skills and once F had the technique of pushing the pointier end of the sunflower seed in to the apple she busily worked away. These home made bird feeders were also a hit with our local birds and the girls took great pleasure in watching all the different birds come for a tasty snack.

Posting Letters

Another activity which teaches the idea of doing something kind for others is creating these cards to post to some one else. This is such an easy activity to try at home with children but does teach them that their actions can have a positive effect on others. It also a great way of getting younger children to do some meaningful mark making and older children purposeful writing.

Acts of Kindness

We decided that inspired by our book this month we would start an acts of kindness inspiration/celebration chart. I thought of some ideas myself first and then added them to the chart. Lots we already be doing with our activities in our subscription box and lots of others would be easy for children young and old to complete. Some were inspired by little things that my children had already done and had a huge impact on me. For example F one day randomly cam up to me and gave me a huge bear like cuddle and said “That’s what you needed!” And it really was. That little deed had a huge impact on me. I also left some blank spaces where we could add some others as and when we thought of them or as and when we spotted someone doing something that we considered kind. As often we don’t necessarily always realise how kind our own actions are sometimes. If you would like a copy of this chart just get in contact with us and we can send it to you.

Toilet Roll Bird Feeder

After the success of our home made apple bird feeders we had lots of sunflower seeds left over and decided to make another one. This is also a very simple bird feeder to try and make at home together with children. We used peanut butter to spread over the toilet roll, but you could also use vegetable shortenings, coconut oil or lard. Once spread on we then scattered and pressed the sunflower seeds on. To hang them we threaded a piece of string through the centre of the tube. Then tied the ends together. The girls enjoyed making these simple bird feeders and enjoyed watching the birds eating from them too!

playdough phonics

Using the playdough we created the letters that we were currently learning out of playdough. I added some objects (from previous boxes and items from our toy bag) which began with the respective letters.

You could also do this activity with numbers and shapes.