Our Favorite Birds

Here are the kids' favorite birds.  What is yours?

Homecoming

Footprint Art

I had the students put their white footprints on blue paper to resemble ghosts.  Then they painted a Halloween scene around it.  We hope it isn't too scary for you!

Hallway Owl Lesson

The students and I brainstormed about what the important details would be concerning owls.  I helped them to write up the facts and I hung it in the hallway to help others learn about owls too.  Later we will teach the first graders about owls and see if they remember what they learned last year.

Look who is at our lake!

 

 

This bird has been at our lake for about a week now.  Your kindergartener will know what it is.  Take a moment to drive out there and see if h/she can find it. Yesterday I saw it skillfully catching Blue Gills.

It is a Great Egret.  It is a beautiful, tall, white, long-legged wading bird that hunts along the shoreline for fish, frogs, and other small aquatic animals.  They were hunted to near extinction in the nineteenth century.  They are a treat to see!
http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Great_Egret/id

 

Owl Pellet Lesson

You could have heard a pin drop as the kids pulled apart these owl pellets to see what the owl had been eating.  They compared the bones to the bone drawings on the chart to see what each bone was.  It was tricky at first, but soon they got quite good at matching the bone to the picture.  They really loved this lesson!

An owl is unable to digest all of its prey, so the fur, feathers and bones are coughed up.  Looking through the pellet tells you what the owl had eaten.  One girls said, "Hmmm...this is creepy and cool at the same time!"  The young students were surprised at how small mice, moles, shrews and voles were.  We did not see any bird bones this time.  Of course they would not think of throwing the bones away, so I let them glue them to a piece of paper, so they could bring them home to show their family.

These pellets had been heated and sanitized, so no worries.  Also we washed afterwards too.

Owl Drawings

I decided to do a step-by-step drawing lesson of an owl.  It was fun and they surprised me with their beautiful drawings!

Quite the artists!