What an exciting week we have had studying the Eastern Blue Bird!

We are doing a Bird Unit Study from some resources we purchased from Currclick, the link is posted below.  We spent a several days this week learning about the life of the Eastern Blue Bird. 

If you are interested in resources for your homeschool or classroom on great unit studies that are affordable, click on the Currclick link.  We purchased the Daily Bird, My Favorite Backyard Bird,  Bird Call Memory, John James Audubon: A Great Appreciation of Nature Unit Study, and All Owls.  Some resources on their site are free, and others range in price from  $.50 and up.

Just type in the search box on the website to locate what you are looking for:

CurrClick “curriculum in a click”

Here are some of the basic details we discovered. 

The Eastern Blue Bird lives in the Eastern half of the US and central America.  It is a cousin of the Western Blue Bird.  It prefers to eat insects and berries.  It will occasionally eat lizards and frogs and other prey.  It usually lives near the edge of an open area or near an orchard.  It will often build a nest very high 50 feet up, in an old woodpecker hole in a pine tree or oak tree, but will also build nests in holes on fence posts.  The female builds nests made of horse hair, turkey feathers, grass, and pine needles.  The male will help collect the items for the female to build the nest with.  The female lays 4 to 5 eggs that are pale blue in color and keeps them warm until they hatch.  The male will help feed the young after they hatch.

The best way to attract the Eastern Blue Bird to your yard is to set out a bowl of meal worms for them to enjoy. 

On Thursday we drew and colored pictures of the bird and made a web drawing of its life. and began working on a lapbook for our bird study.  On Friday we practiced listening to eight different bird calls and played a memory game to help us remember what each bird sounds like and how to recognize their calls.

Today, Saturday,  we attended a science lab class in Greenville, South Carolina called Science Beyond the Classroom.  The teacher, Ellen Kahue, offers these classes 1 time a month.   She has a great website where you can see lots of information about the labs and what the children are learning:

http://www.explore-science-beyond-the-classroom.com/  



The kids loved taking this class with Ellen Kahue! Thank you Ellen for a great learning adventure! 

Ellen offered several of these classes during the day, and we chose the morning class.  The kids were in a room with about 10 children and a few parents.  

They were so excited too because they got to wear scientist lab coats!     


Daddy joined the class with them and helped the teacher as needed, while I stayed outside and pushed my two little ones around in a stroller.  It was very hot and sunny outside in Greenville today.  We walked around the building and up and down the road.  We found birds, pine cones, picked and ate rasberries, saw lots of bugs, and more while we waited.  We also visited with another mom toward the end of the wait.  We had just as much fun as the older boys and dad. 

By taking this class, the boys learned more information about the life of the Eastern Blue Bird.  They received a bird watching journal and a packet of stickers and binoculars for locating the birds.  Over the next week or two they are to keep and eye out for the different birds in the journal.  Once they find a bird, they are to put the correct sticker next to it in their journal.  Once they complete the journal, we are to get back in touch with the teacher to recieve a certificate of completion.

During the lab class, the children each built a bird feeder by drilling holes in a log, filling the holes with shortning inside the class and then came outside to push sunflower seeds and pine seeds into the shortning.  Then they put a hanger eyelet and wire on one end.  It is a beautiful and very natural looking birdfeeder.  I am very impressed by its simplicity, but very functional.

                        

They also built a bird house out of a gourd and again put a hanger on the small end.  The gourd has been painted white.

Tommorrow we will place these feeders and houses in our yard.     For now we will need to get some poles to put them on as we dont have any trees yet and still working the yard trying to get grass to grow. 

In the future, I would really like to set up a small observing garden area to watch birds, frogs, butterflys and other insects.  A place special to sit on benches and such, surrounded by bird feeders, bird houses, small fountains, bird baths, flowers and bushes and such.  Maybe have a small gold fish pond too.  A quiet place for the children to sit and observe the world around them.  A “thinking” place.  I haven’t yet come up with a design, but I am putting some ideas together. 

In the afternoon we went to Conestee Lake and Nature Preserve.  We walked a trail that took us on a boardwalk over marshy ground and you could hear many birds up in the trees.  Some would fly above us, but they were took quick for us to see what they were.  Then we came to an open area over water and the board walk became a bridge and there were two adult geese and five goslings swiming along.  The boys were so excited to spot them.

We also went to the Southside park to see the water park (will do this adventure on another day) and play at the play ground.  There we spotted several robins coming and going finding worms and insects on the ground then flying up into the trees.

On our way home, coming back up the mountain on highway 25, we spotted three wild turkeys eating in the grass near the highway.

When we pulled into the driveway, before getting out of the van, we spotted two mocking birds in our yard.  They were black and white and very beautiful to look at.  They poked around on the ground for a while then flew off to some taller bushes to perch in.

They boys were so excited to find and recognize the different birds during our trip today, and when they got into the house they located the stickers for those birds and put th
em in their bird watching journal.  They are already asking us when we can go on a bird scavavenger hunt and find more birds, when we can study the next bird in our Bird Unit Study, and they are asking when they can take another Science Beyond The Classroom lab class with Miss Ellen Kahue.

Be Blessed!