These are some of the books we’ve been reading over the past couple of weeks as we learn about birds. I will be putting up a post with our bird crafts and activities (maybe a few posts?) soon!
We checked out a lot of books, some just for fun, and some with a lot of great information. Our favorites are in the carousel above, and below are the ones I consider the best of the best (of what we read). We also looked at birds in a field guide book we already own, as well as in some old encyclopedias from my childhood.
About Birds: A Guide For Children
, by Cathryn Sil. 
This book has lovely illustrations (I think watercolors and perhaps acrylics… I couldn’t find the exact mediums used listed anywhere in the book) by John Sil, a well-known wildlife artist. The text is brief and easy to understand, and this book acts as a wonderful introduction to various kinds of birds, as well as simple facts about birds (ie. some birds fly, some swim, others run). A Nest Full of Eggs
, by Priscilla Belz Jenkins. 
This is a “Let’s-Read-and-Find-Out-About-Science” Stage 1 book. It is chock-full of great information and detailed illustrations! It talks about many different kinds of birds, but gives detailed information about Robins in particular. It explains and illustrates the steps of making a nest, shows the development of a baby bird within an egg, and there is a great feather identification page with 24 different species listed. This is an amazing book and M was pretty interested in it. I appreciated that the book had “normal” text on each page and then additional little blurbs throughout for more info. It can get to be a bit long and you can take cues from your child about whether they want to know all the additional information or not.Whiteblack the Penguin Sees the World
, by Margret and H.A. Rey (the writers of Curious George). 
This is just a cute and fun book. We love the Reys and pretty much anything they’ve written. Little Whiteblack wants to collect some exciting stories to tell his friends in Penguinland. So he sets off and has quite an exciting adventure! The more we read this book the more interesting it became… I enjoyed the difference between the cold land Whiteblack is from and the camel he meets from the desert. He also meets up with an ostrich family, another bird that can’t fly. I think there’s a lot of great conversation starters in this book as well as good jumping off points to learn about other animals and their habitats.Flap Your Wings! by P.D. Eastman.
This book is just funny, funny, funny. M loves it and laughs at it every time we read it. Two birds return to their nest to find a very large egg in it and although they have a few misgivings they decide to keep it and let it hatch. The baby “bird” doesn’t really look much like a bird, and he’s very hungry… extremely hungry. Eventually it’s time for him to learn to fly and this is where M really cracks up. :) It was a great book for learning that many animals, not just birds, come from eggs.Have a beautiful day! :)
(Eek! Don’t look at my stained bowls throughout this post, please!)
It was about 2 minutes and they were already getting super-shiny! We did this part over and over with all our pennies, and talked about how copper is a metal and oxidizes when it’s out in the air. So now my 3 year old is walking around saying “oxidized”. :) He has future nerd written all over him. 
Then we waited. A couple of hours later we checked and here’s what our silver paperclip looked like: 
The metal on the paperclip attracted the copper particles that the pennies shed in the vinegar. 