Thursday, April 15, 2010

Birds – Picture Cards and Songs

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We are so blessed to live where we do… with almost a full acre’s worth of yard and an abundance of trees, we have many different little feathered friends. :) The pretty one above is one of my favorites (that’s a public domain photo, not actually one of our goldfinches, but ours are just as sweet-looking).  Additionally, we have a handful of trails near a creek bed in a wooded area to our north, and a small lake to our south.  We see plenty of wildlife, including some amazing birds.  The lake often has bald eagles near it and we even saw one on a tall pine in our backyard a couple of years ago!  This is all despite being pretty near a major highway, the one drawback to our neighborhood.

Now that spring has sprung the birds are out in full force and we’ve been learning a lot about these little guys.  I couldn’t believe when I sat down to make a list of all the different species that I came up with 25!  I’ve learned all their names over the past 10 or so years thanks to my nature-loving husband.  And it’s so neat and fun to share this knowledge with M.

Another post about all our little bird-study activities will be coming soon (I hope!), but for now I wanted to share with you some little cards I’ve made.  These are the 25 species of birds we’ve encountered in our own yard or within a mile of our home.  I’m sure there are others, but really 25 is enough, don’t you think?  These could be used as Montessori 3-part cards if you made two copies of each.  They’d also be great for a matching game or “go fish” type card game.  We are using them simply to learn their names and talk about them.   And as long as I have them made, I might as well share them, right? :)  Click on the picture to go to the download page:image

One of our favorite activities has been learning the various bird songs.  I’ve made a list at enature.com of all 25 species… we use the list to learn more about each bird and most have an audio file to listen to the sounds and songs of each bird.  I’ve found it fascinating and M seems to really enjoy it too!  The link is here, and you’ll need to use BirdCards9 as the user name and blogger as the password. Along the top of the page (about an inch down from the top) you'll see a menu bar; under "Local Nature" click on "Personal Wildlife List" to go to the list I created.  Any questions or problems, contact me!  You'll need to click on the birds and then you'll see a yellow button labeled "listen".  Click on this to hear each bird!

If you use these and blog about them, please include a link back here.
Have a beautiful day! :)

8 comments:

  1. This is so great Nicole. I need to ask someone here in NY if they are having issues with Starlings. They are kind of a bully bird that scare away all the other song birds. That is all I ever see. Only a few Robins here and there. Hmmm. Not happy about that. I know where we lived in MN they were also having a starling issue. I will have to research what seed starlings don't like and the other birds do. Miss ya. We haven't chatted in forever. Can't wait to see your other bird projects b/c Drew and I were just going to start on birds.

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  2. Awesome, Nicole! I was going to make some of these, but our container arrived from Costa Rica and I've been too busy unpacking! You have totally saved me all the work. We love birdwatching in our yard and often go to the park nearby to feed the mallard ducks. Thanks!
    http://theadventuresofbear.blogspot.com

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  3. These are very cool, I've actually been looking for something like this - thanks!

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  4. Thank You so much. I am so unfamiliar with North American birds and it's great to be able to learn their names. I didn't know that hummingbirds live in MN, I always thought of them as warm climate birds. How fun it must be to see so many different birds.

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  5. Thanks so much for the enature.com suggestion! I've been looking for a site like this, and it's perfect!

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  6. Hi Nicole, Getting back into the swings of things after a long break. I've added these card to freehomeschoolprintables.blogspot.com

    Thanks for sharing. :)

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  7. Just browsing around your site a little bit and love the free printables you share! I am a kindred spirit in that I love anything about birds and sharing that with my son. We have a book called "Bird Songs" which has a picture of the bird, a bird bio and then you can press the button to hear their song. I'm going to check out this site you mention!

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