Bird Unit wrap up

We have wrapped up our bird unit. We really enjoyed the unit, we learned alot and made quite a few memories.

We have recently added time for learning, an online program for math and language arts to our curriculum.

We took last week and part of this week off from our unit studies to take a bajillion completely unrelated field trips.

I believe that our next unit study according to KONOS would be Light. But we might take a quick break to study domestic animals briefly. Lately the kids have been very interested in keeping track of the cat and the dogs. Well, and practically speaking, we need to put some time into training our dog... you know, two birds.... one stone....

Birds at the zoo

We got a special treat when we were looking at the birds in the zoo. The kookaburra bird did his famous laugh for us. It was awesome! We sang the kookaburra song through the zoo after that for quite a while.

Bird watching on Bolivar Penninsula

Today we went bird watching. We saw some loons, a ton of seagulls, and pelicans. A sweet little family of Turns entertained us.

All in all we expected to see many more birds, but all the trees were damaged in Ike, so the birds don't have as many places to land.

The focus shifted to seashells, but it was still a blast.

Bird Unit Study, Week 3, day 1

Today we did all our regular work... math, reading, grammer and then we went over cardinals and mockingbirds. Emma and Chloe liked the Cardinals the best. It figures, they are colorful and loud.

The girls also spent alot of time today on Starfall.com

Bird Unit Study, Week 2: Lesson Plan

Birds to review two each day:

• mockingbirds - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Mockingbird
  
• mockingbird song : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=779OWVW4G6o
• cardinal: http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/BirdGuide/Northern_Cardinal.html
• cardinal bird song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrI8t6nhlgg
  
• chickadee: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tit_(bird)
• chickadee bird song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvJagVJxLtw&feature=related
• goldfinch: http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/BirdGuide/American_Goldfinch.html
• goldfinch song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSnWGAq1Los
• Blue Jays: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_jay
• blue jay: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96NLezGF0_o
• sparrow: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparrow
• sparrow song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PYZeVT_M5E

Nests and Care of Young

• bald eagle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOT_zz4ptB8&feature=related
• penguins: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxpD4UMci8A
• flamingo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxNniujV-Qo

Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday

• Try to identify the birds in your area by color, markings, and song. Try to draw them.
• Put food out for the birds... use peanuts to make a bird garland, halve oranges and string on trees
• start a bird log
• on any nice days/feeling good days go walk around the park to view the birds
  

Tuesday

• eat a bird lunch: ants on a log (celery with peanut butter and raisins), sunflower seeds, nectar (soda) through a straw, snakes (hot dogs), fruits.
• fill/create bird feeders, sew peanuts on a string to create edible garland for birds

Wednesday

• cover one cloth with shortening, and leave the other shortening free. Spray water on the two cloths to demonstrate how a duck waterproofs feathers.

Thursday

• Compare a chicken bone to a cow bone.

The vultures are circling...

Sounds ominous doesn't it? Last week we took off for Spring Break, but as it happens we did have a school lesson. We were driving out of our subdivision when we came across these vultures. A bunny had died in the road and they were "cleaning" it. We have so many rabbits in our subdivision I am convinced we must be sitting on top of a massive warren. So we stopped and watched. (I know, its a bit gorey, but it was very educational). I spared everyone pics of the corpse, but got these great photos of the vultures on our light pole. They aren't the prettiest, but they are huge. The kids were really impressed when the birds flew so close to us and ate the bunny.

Today was our day to study vultures, and of course everyone reminisced about the ones we had seen. We did our math and our phonics/reading/grammer. We are trying to take it somewhat easy, and heal up. Somehow we have wound up AGAIN with this stupid cold/virus whatever it is. So we did alot of starfall.com today too.

Bird Unit Study, Week 1, Day 4: Interesting Bird Videos