Step-by-step tutorial
Step 1
Learning to count is so much more fun when it is presented in an interesting way! To make nests, roll down the edges of a lunch sized paper bag. Keep rolling and scrunching until you reach the bottom (I love how fast this was to prepare!). Write the number in the middle of the nest. I used blue garden stones to represent our bird eggs. If you don't have these on hand you can use pom poms, rocks, or small pieces of crumpled paper as your eggs.
Step 2
My daughter needs to work on numbers 5-10, but this activity can work with any set of numbers. For early toddlers, have them put one "egg" in each nest to practice one to one correspondence. Older preschoolers can practice counting larger numbers 10-20 and even older children can use large counters that each represent 10 to count by 10s (or 5s or 2s).
Step 3
She loved sitting outside and filling the birds' nests!
Final result!
"Let's do it again!" she said, when we finished. We've counted with these birds' nests over and over again. Since then we've also used them to sort different colors and shapes.