Today was our official kick off of the Birds Unit Study, and also just happens to be our Zoom Co-Op day. It was a fun kick off with everyone on camera and making nests!
We read Nest by Jorey Hurley, The Nest by Constantine Georgiou and Mama Built a Little Nest, Jennifer Ward together while making nests from materials we had at home. Pip really listened to HOW birds build nests and included things like “cushion” and even “spider webs”. I love watching how his brain works! We also listened to a bit of this month’s Classical Music Playlist while creating together.
A few friends stayed after the goodbye song and we did some excellent sensory play – with cooked spaghetti! We tried to make Spaghetti Birds Nests from it, weave with it and overall just ran our fingers through it. Liv spent most of her time smelling it, she’s seriously my olfactory kid. After a bit the homeschool mamas got curious what else we could do and went hunting on Pinterest for some more ideas…
Do a few drops of oil (olive or vegetable) and a few drops of food coloring on cooked pasta then squish around in a ziplock baggie. Let it sit open and dry out for 15 minutes (ours dried out for about 5 hours!) then rinse it off. It makes some really vibrant colors! It is all in our fridge now for more play tomorrow. We may add some scissors in for cutting practice before we throw it away.
Outside we had some fun too. The kids and I have been reading about how to attract birds to our feeders and heard a bird bath is a selling point! I had to make due with what I could find at WalMart yesterday, but I’m pretty happy with our end result! Now let’s see if it works.
After dinner, Pip and I started the Woven Bowls activity and talked about what we learned about today. Did you know many birds weave their nests using spider webs? I had to make Pip stop and get ready for bed, but he can’t wait to continue tomorrow (his is the green).
I’ve been busy prepping our Bird Shelf for the upcoming days. We’ve already reference The Big Book of Birds quite a few times today, I’m so happy with our purchase. And the Sibley Backyard Birding Flashcards are such an excellent resource! The kids reference them every day, learning to identify the visitors to our yard. Liv looked out on the deck today and announced “Oh look! Another House Finch!” I’ve also been busy laminating resources for the upcoming days including the Life Cycle of a Robin.
If you haven’t discovered magnetic tape yet, well today is your lucky day! The red strip behind/above the Bird Shelf is a magnetic strip. We also use our fridge for a lot of resource too. So magnetic tape is a quick and easy way for me to put up our resources and for the kids to explore them, put them in order, play with them and then quickly ‘”put them away” when done. Today I used it on the Life Cycle of a Robin so they kids can put them in order on the magnetic strip when exploring our resources on the shelf.
We’ve continued to journal birds and keep a count (practicing tally marks) of the birds we see each day. House Finches are in the lead, but a trip to our local lake in a few days may skew those results some!
We didn’t get to everything today, which is fine. I didn’t expect to – I made the Week One list as more of a “menu”. For example, we didn’t get to Robin’s Nest Addition today because I’m still cutting out ALL THOSE DANG EGGS. But it should be out on the shelf tomorrow. Maybe. We’ll see. We hope to watch some of the Nest Cams and start learning our folk song tomorrow.
Who knows what the day will bring. But that is what is great about homeschooling – we get to go at our own pace, spend a longer time on things that interest, and skip things that are bombing.
Thanks for following along with us!
❤ Tara
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.