Bird Basics

I'll start today with a personal note:  In the last month, I became a grandma!  After having been married and childless for 6 and 8 years, both my daughters decided to start a family.  At the same time! They have always liked to do things together! My youngest daughter gave birth to our first grandson, Isaac, on January 13. Three weeks and a day later, her older sister became a first-time mom to Matthew.  So, for the last month, I've spent more time at my daughter's homes, holding precious grandsons, than I have in my classroom. 

So, now I'm back home, all caught up with the grading and planning and ready to get back to teaching... and there is no school!  Snow Day! I'll take this chance to do a little catching up! 

Birds are everywhere, especially the backyard!  We, and our students, are so used to seeing them that we don't even notice them most of the time.  But, since they are right outside our windows, teachers have an opportunity to open students'  eyes and use birds to teach many science concepts.  Habitats, adaptations, migration, and camouflage are just a few.  I am also a big believer that people will value what they know and experience, so studying birds can lead to students who love

birds and are interested in conservation and motivated to care for their environment.  

Last summer, I attended a great (Inexpensive! I think it was $20) workshop called "Flying Wild" that is a program of the Council for Environmental Education (councilforee.org).  I used many activities from the resource guide that my students loved, from "Fill the Bill,"  in which students use different implements (tweezers, tongs, a straw...) to decide which bird's beak each represents, to "The Great Migration Game,"which is like a "choose your own adventure" life-sized board game. There is information for planning a Bird Festival and lots of online resources for birding and bird education.  If Flying Wild comes to your area, it is well worth your time to attend!

If you live in Illinois, the Illinois Department of Natural Resources (dnr.illinois.gov) has many great free teaching resources for use by Illinois teachers:  posters, workbooks, CDs, and trading cards of birds, animals, rocks and minerals, and many other topics.  They also have trunks full of items that teachers can borrow.  The bird trunk is full of bird field guides, skull models, books, CDs, and a bird DVD.  It even has stuffed birds that make their sounds when you squeeze them.  I used these items during our bird unit.  Needless to say, the students loved them.

I finished off our bird unit by giving my students a winter bird checklist, with pictures of birds that spend the winter in Southern Illinois.  I'll try to include that so you can see it.  Students were to choose one day to look for the 6 winter birds and tally all that they saw.  Then they were to report their findings on ebird.org, which is one of several national databases that keep track of birds in the U.S.  I tell them that they are citizen scientists and this is important work they're doing. I also give extra credit!  My next project will be a bird feeding area on the playground.  I'm not sure if I'll get to that this year or next, though!

I'm all for using available materials to get kids excited about science and birds are certainly that - available!  

Weather Center

An easy "backyard" science project is to set up a simple weather center on the playground.  I made mine in a few hours from scrap wood I found in the garage.  On it is an anemometer, thermometer, rain gauge, and wind sock.  I also have a homemade barometer in my classroom.  Each day, my student weather reporter checks the temperature, wind speed and direction, precipitation, barometer, and type of clouds.  (And, sometimes gets locked out and has to knock on the window to be let back inside! Love  fourth graders!) They then give a weather report and record their data on a spreadsheet on the computer.  Keeping a spreadsheet allows us to make graphs and compare information from week to week, month to month, or even season to season.

As a result of paying attention to, and checking and recording the weather each day, my students are not only learning the names and purposes of weather instruments and types of clouds, but also developing some basic knowledge of weather forecasting.  I'm attaching a picture of my weather station.  You can see that it's not really a big deal, but a simple tool that can result in big learning (in the backyard!).