May Work Shelf

 Here's our May work shelf.  We're using a loose theme of birds this month, so there are a few bird-related items out.  I also changed out the puzzles for something new for each kid and something that relates to their current ability level. 

 First off are two little baskets--one has two little nests in it and a handful of those little mushroom birds.  Ours are old--I bought them when Q was a baby for a bird unit.  Several are missing beaks and random feathers, but my kids still love them.  They enjoy using them in dramatic play and putting them in their nests, etc.  I also sometimes put out some tiny eggs (or egg-shaped items), but little man is mouthing too much right now and tiny eggs would be too tempting for him.  The other basket holds an assortment of small feathers for dramatic play or to fill the nests with.  The nests came from a craft store a while back. 

 We have a little jewelery box that sits out all the time.  I change out the jewels that are inside it, because the kids do best with only a couple choices of necklaces at a time.  So these two necklaces are the spring choices:

 This is a game we're enjoying--it was a great Goodwill find.  The cards have silhouettes that match the wooden objects.  Awesome visual discrimination activity, but my kids also just like playing with the pieces. 

 A basket of laminated bird cards/magazine cut outs.

 This one came about by Quinn--she came downstairs with her stuffed turtle and said she needed to build it a home so she wanted some hay (we'd just been playing with a chicken/chicks play area in the playroom with hay in the nests).  We decided turtles needed sand, so we found a gold shawl that worked perfectly.  I'd spray painted some big plastic easter eggs and we'd speckeled them to hold a couple felt chicks I'd made the kids.  We rounded up some little plastic turtles to hatch out of the eggs and it made a perfect little turtle dramatic play set!

 This magnetic board was a gift from Mike and Iya for Q a while back.  I got it out again and the kids are enjoying it.  They can put magnetic pieces--glasses, hats, mustaches, etc. on the picture, and there are also some spring-related magnets in the basket.