What's all the Twitter?

At the entrance to the trail we came across a very VERY friendly Gray Jay. It sat pretty for us for quite some time, Elias was even able to hand feed it some nuts. It was particularly exciting as Aria has been working hard on a book about Blue Jays (a relative of the Gray Jay).

In fact all the kids, on their own, decided they would make books about specific birds. Elias' is on the Great Horned Owl and Ben's is about the Brown Creeper.

The fact that they are interested in birds isn't new. Making books is not something new either. They are constantly sewing, hole punching, tying books together. It is the filling part that has me caught off guard. They are making maps, copying out bits of interesting information from books, masters of the index and google, requesting printed pictures from Dad, etc. All of their own accord. It's been very cool to watch the three of them take this journey together.

Birds.

We really dig them. We have gathered activities and ideas with the purpose of sharing something we love with the homeschooling community in our new town. With Spring around the corner there have been lots of birding activities in blog world.

feeding birds with fruit and special signs

bread wreath

how about squash

bird watching

Audubon

identifying birds and more birds

general bird info

great backyard bird count

Some activities we have been enjoying (most of which we have made)

Bird of Prey Bingo

Match the picture of the bird with the name (in a memory game style)

What type of Beak? we put different types of bird food (nuts, flowers, different sizes of seeds) and a bunch of different types of instruments, each of which represent different types of beaks (straws, needle nose pliers, large thick pliers, a hook) and a pile of bird pictures. We link the three groups. ie. animal (puppet), hook, red tailed hawk, straw, flower hummingbird.

A clock is used to tell another birder where a bird is, for example it is at 6 o'clock in that tree. We created a tree poster and took turns placing a 'bird' in the tree and sharing what time it was at. We then did this on a walk, using binoculars.

dissecting owl pellets and fallen down birds nests

attempting to build our own nest, a 6 foot bald eagles nest and a 6 inch robins nest

food chain challenge- we see how long we can make a food chain for a bird and then if we can turn them into food webs

this is not an exhausted list by any means....just part of what we are enjoying :)