Friday, May 7, 2010

All About Birds

As we’ve been having our little bird theme, I’ve seen M’s love and understanding of nature blossom.  He has been spending every spare second outside… enjoying being a kid.  He’s gotten more baths in the past 3 weeks than he has in his entire life.  Ok, that’s an exaggeration, but that’s pretty much how it has seemed to me. :)

The first thing he does each morning is look out his window to see if any bunnies or squirrels or maybe even deer are having breakfast:blog pictures 035and he can recognize the songs of cardinals, robins, blue jays, chipping sparrows, and chickadees.  He even does a good imitation of them!  He’s picked up the names of many flowers and trees just by… osmosis I guess?  Sometimes I just don’t know how he knows so much!

So – on to our bird activities…

Math Skills:

I found a cute little game here.  The birds are made by taping pennies onto the playing pieces, and there are 3 dice to choose from – easy, medium, and difficult.  We used the medium one which made us go back one space and/or lose a turn once in a while.  The first birdie to hop along all the clouds and make his way to the tree wins. :)blog pictures 022

Visual Discrimination:

I put out this bird matching game from Homeschool Share (it’s supposed to be a file folder game, but I just made it into mats).  M loves this and was very interested since he hadn’t seen it in a while.blog pictures 052
Here’s a better picture; you match up cards with enlarged details to the correct bird:blog pictures 055

Language Skills:

I made a set of bird picture cards of birds we have near our home.  I printed two sets, then cut the name off of one set.  We used these like Montessori 3-part cards.  blog pictures 056
M matched up the pictures first, then found the correct name for each bird too.  This was the first time we’ve tried something like this and it went really well.  Some were easier than others, like Mallard Duck and Canada Goose since they have two words in their names.  He usually looked for the first letter, then decided if the rest of the word looked correct.  I divided these up into smaller groups for him (there are 25 in all which would’ve been a bit overwhelming).blog pictures 021 I made an online list of these birds at enature.com so we could listen to their songs and sounds.  You can read more about the cards, as well as find the link for the enature list in this post.  M really enjoyed listening to the birds on the computer!


Science:

We looked through some old encyclopedias – old, as in I had them as a child and have kept them for some reason.  M was fascinated with all the exotic birds pictured. blog pictures 041
We also looked at some egg pictures and I pointed out the ones for “our” birds:blog pictures 040
The encyclopedia also did a great job of covering the various types of beaks and feet that birds have.   blog pictures 042
We made these pipecleaner bird feet…blog pictures 051 the one on the left has three toes in front and one in back.  Songbirds curl their toes around branches (M did this on his finger, and really liked it), and even sleep this way!  Birds of prey (eagles, hawks, owls) also have three toes in front and one in back like this, but they have very, very sharp claws on them (the better to catch mice with – yum!).   The foot on the right is like a woodpecker’s foot – two toes in front and two in back.  They use their toes to dig into a tree’s wood as they climb.

We also took a look at some information I found at the Fernbank Science Center website.  We learned more about bird feet and beaks and did the activity sheets pictured below…

Match the foot to the correct type of bird:image
And match the beak to the type of food it’s meant for:image
I was searching for ideas to make this a more hands-on learning experience for M, and the next time we do a bird theme, I will definitely use two great activities from The Adventures of Bear.  First, a great hands-on beak activity here, and a bird diagram puzzle here.

Other Bird Activities:

M cut yarn into small lengths (about 4") and we put it out on our doorstep for the birds to use in their nests:ts 300 (1)
Last summer he planted some gourds, specifically meant for wren houses.  Daddy drilled a hole in one, cleaned it out, and hung it up to dry all winter.  This spring M painted and glazed it and we hung it in a tree.  It looks like a cozy home, and we are waiting for you to move in, little wrens!  blog pictures 006
We did some super-fun bird crafts; click on the photos below to go to the post about each one…

Birdhouse Suncatcher:image
Shapes Bird:image

Paper Bag Bird’s Nest: image
To see a list of good children’s books we used during our little bird unit, see this post.
We learned some new songs too!

And we finished it all up with a science experiment about air pressure.

For more preschool posts, check out Preschool Corner and Weekly Wrap-Up!

Have a beautiful day! :)

12 comments:

  1. I love that hes so into birds and that he knows the different sounds!!

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  2. What an amazing post! I love all your ideas. Thanks for sharing them!

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  3. GREAT sensory activities! I love your blog title :) I know the feeling!

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  4. Looks like a super fun and educational week!

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  5. What a really great week!!! So many fun activities! :)

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  6. Wow, what a great week! So many bird activities! Bet he'll love birds forever.

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  7. Wow! Those are great activities! I am going to have to bookmark these to use later...my little guy is newly fascinated with birds... his MeMe has some babies in her birdhouse that he's been watching. I came from Homeschool Creations link up.

    By the way, congrats on winning the Kumon workbook from Mamato3blessings!

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  8. I'm so glad you joined in the Weekly Wrap-up this week! It looks like you had a wonderful week. I always enjoy learning about birds.

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  9. Great Post!
    You will be featured on The Montessori Goldmine this week
    thanks,
    Jo
    http://themontessorigoldmine.blogspot.com/

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  10. What a great week on birds! My son loves birds.. I need to sit down and plan out some more in depth studies on things he loves like you have done :-)

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  11. You have so many fantastic ideas here - the real birdhouse is my favorite though. I am looking forward to your next theme.

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  12. what a great post. thank you so much for sharing. my little one is loving birds right now, and i cant wait to do some of these activities with her!

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