Friday, October 19, 2012

Science is for the birds

 This week our Oak Meadow curriculum wants us to look for birds, to observe them flying south, and do a bird count. Here is the problem: birds who fly south have already done it here in Alaska. The birds who are left aren't many so observation is really, really, boring. So I had to come up with something else. 



With much searing I found an inexpensive printable about animal tracks from montessori print shop 
I'd take the boys out to actually LOOK at animal tracks but it's been snowing for the last 3 days so finding fresh tracks was impossible.


We also got out some of our better animals and made our own tracks in some clay to see how they matched up.


We followed this up by making a bird feeder with a store bought twig wreath, peanut butter, & bird seed.  So far only the squirrel has found it but that's been entertaining to watch him try and figure out how to hang upside down to eat from it.


We bought this owl pellet at an educational store a month ago and finally had a good reason to break it out. We found almost an entire bird skeleton in it. I printed out a really good mini owl lapbook from Lapbook Lessons  which complemented the pellet project nicely and gave us some good writing practice.