Soar is a lovely book written by Hillary Daecher, illustrated by Angie Hohenadel and published by Schiffer. The pictures are bright, colourful and detailed and the story is beautifully written and rhymes which children seem to love. My 3 year old was transfixed by the pictures and the story kept him engaged from beginning to end. Ramone, the bird in the story, is a loveable character and his mum is there to help encourage him when he is too scared to leave the nest. The way the story is written makes you want Ramone to succeed but you also understand the fear that he feels. At the back of the book are some hummingbird facts and some conversation starters which are a nice addition to the book.
Activities
Make a bird seed ball
Go and see some real life hummingbirds
Pretend to be a hummingbird
Edible bird nests
Vegetable hummingbird creation
Turn a fruit into a hummingbird head
Conversation about fears
Make a hummingbird
Make a hummingbird nest
Outdoor
I thought that we would start with the outdoor activities first as the book is set outside. An activity for the garden could be for your child/children to make a bird seed ball (or another shape if you are feeling creative). There is special peanut butter that you can buy for birds and then if you mix this with some bird seed and mould it into a ball shape then you have a bird seed ball. If you poke some string through the middle then you can hang the ball up and then watch the birds feed from it. Another activity could be to go and see some hummingbirds. You could have a look on the internet and see if there is somewhere near where you live where you could go and see hummingbirds. This could be a fun family trip out and is something different to do. A final outdoor activity could be for your child/children to pretend that they are a hummingbird. Draw some big flowers on the floor using chalk or if you haven't got any chalk then you could get your child/children to run to different parts of the garden. They can pretend to fly around the garden and go and collect some nectar from the flowers. Hummingbirds fly fast so if you have more than one child then you could get a bit of a competition going and you could time who flies round and collects the nectar the quickest.
Food/Cooking
For a sweet activity you could make bird nests using shredded wheat and melted chocolate. If you don't want to use chocolate then you could use honey instead. Mix together and put in paper cases and then make a dent in the middle to put some eggs. These could be mini eggs, jelly beans or raisins. These look really effective. For a savoury activity you could provide your child/children with some different vegetables and get them to either make a hummingbird or tree (or both) using the vegetables you have provided them with. They can get as creative as they want. A final hummingbird inspired food activity could be to decorate an orange, mandarin or satsuma as the hummingbirds head and then stick a twiglet into it for the beak. This would make a good snack. While doing these sort of activities it could be a good time to talk about fears, bravery and that there is always someone around to support them when they do feel afraid. Children are more likely to talk when they are engaged in activities so they might tell you something you didn't know. There is no harm in sharing your fears too so that they know that everyone gets scared sometimes.
Indoor
The first indoor activity could be to make a hummingbird. You can do this by getting some card and cutting out a round head for the head, a long oval shape for the body, a wing shape for the wing (which is a bit like a rhino horn shape) and a bird tail shape for the bird (which is a bit like a fan shape). Stick these altogether to make the hummingbird shape and then your child/children can colour in their hummingbird. Hummingbirds have a long beak so you could make this out of card or use a pipe cleaner. You could also make a hummingbird out of pompoms, googly eyes, a pipe cleaner and a paper plate. Get your child/children to colour the paper plate in and then cut out the wings and tail from it. If you use the edge of the paper plate as the edge of the wings and tail then this will make it look effective. Stick two pompoms together using glue or double sided sticky tape and then attach the tail, wings and googly eyes. You can use the pipe cleaner as the beak and if you wanted to, you could attach some string to hang them. A final activity could be to make Ramone's comfy nest. You could do this by cutting a paper plate in half or by using a semi-circle of card and then your child/children could draw some nice twigs and flowers on it or they could stick some hay, grass, twigs or straw on and then they could make a little hummingbird to poke his head out of the nest using card.
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