We had such a blast with the kids this morning enjoying some free-time, two stories about Grumpy Bird, a creative Grumpy Bird craft and welcoming two ECCE students who made craft pizza plates with the kids!

The kids loved the simplicity of making their very own pizza.  The ECCE students had already readied some paper pizza’s with coloured sauce and the kids could pick through cut-out paper pepperoni, meatballs, red pepper and mushrooms and glue them onto their very own pizza plate.

Some kids chose to glue-on what they loved most to eat on their pizzas, while others had fun making smiley faces!

Once the pizzas were done, the kids popped them in the play kitchen’s oven, cooked them up nice and hot, made sure to blow on them to cool them off and then pretended to eat their pizzas.

We also had a blast with story-time!  The kids had a chance to help us out with our two stories on: Grumpy Bird and Boo Hoo Bird.  In both, we talked about what we could do when a friend gets hurt or when a friend is grumpy.  Then we got to help make Bird happy again: with hugs, kisses, sharing cookies, playing peak-a-boo and helping put a band-aid on Bird’s Boo-boo.  If you’d like some tips and tricks to get kids involved when reading to them, we have saved some fun reading to kids videos on our Connexions YouTube Channel.

Once our books done, we got to make some Gumpy Bird crafts.  Cutting can sometimes be overwhelming for kids, especially when it’s cutting out complicated characters.  To help them do the cutting themselves, we added a thick, coloured border around Bird and his Friends to make what is difficult, fun and easy.  Plus, it’s a great opportunity to talk about shapes and colours.  Another great tip: if your child has a hard time using scissors, it sometimes helps to put a sticker on the their thumb: it’s a great visual for helping your child keep their thumb towards them while they are cutting.

Once the shapes were cut-out, we stuck on some stickers, some feathers, sticky velcro spots and even some cotton balls!  We added a stick to the characters and the kids could play with their very own Grumpy Bird and his many Friends!!

If you’d like to do this fun activity at home with your child, we added the cut-outs to the right, as well as a fun and simple maze.  If you’d like some more fine motor and sensory fun activities for the kids, make sure to visit our Itsy Bitsy Tots Playgroup Pinterest Page: we’ve Pinned some great Boards on Fine Motor Activities and even found some great language and visual task cards.

A HUGE thank you to our kids and parents for helping us out with our two stories and crafts!  We had such an amazing time talking about Bird, learning about emotions and finding ways to help our friends when they get sad or grumpy.

We would also like to thank our two ECCE students for organizing such a creative and imaginative craft!

If you would like to participate in our next playgroup on Thursday, November 9, please give us a call at 819-777-3206 or email us at to RSVP.

Enjoy the pics!