Bald Eagle Unit Study

We have just started studying birds and the first bird in our science book, Science Essentials, Grades 3 - 4, is the American Bald Eagle. I did not feel that just the one page in the book was enough information for the children so I put together some additional resources that we will use to give the children a good understanding of our national bird.

Free Bald Eagle Activity Book
Man, no one can put together a great educational book on nature like the U.S. government. I really mean that. I  have a list of numerous free coloring and activity books in the tab at the top of the site and many of them were published by a .gov site. This book about bald eagle awareness week is extremely thorough in talking about eagles. As a matter of fact, it contains way more info than what I feel is needed in our studies. So, I just printed off pages 3-6 and that will be plenty for us.

Free Bald Eagle Coloring Pages
There is no shortage of these pages. No doubt you will one to your child's liking by just doing a quick search on Google. I am going to pull up images of bald eagle coloring pages and let each child pick the one he or she wants to color.

Free Bald Eagle Crafts
I am keeping this to a 3 day lesson so we will just be dong a little craft. I am going to let each of the children choose from one of the following.

bald eagle toilet paper roll craft
paper bag bald eagle craft
color and cut patriot eagle

Bald Eagle Documentary
There is a cool little documentary from 1938 on the Internet Archives called Birds of Prey. Bald eagles are discussed briefly.

Manatee Unit Study

We spent two weeks learning about manatees as part of our science studies of endangered species. They are quite intriguing and the children enjoyed learning about them.

Short Manatee Video
First we watched a National Geographic video about manatees heading south. My children had no idea what a manatee is or what they look like so this was a good introduction.

Free Manatee Activity Book
I printed out a really great activity book called Manatees - Florida's Gentle Giants. In my opinion the book could serve as a complete curriculum. But I like to pull from numerous resources to get some different perspectives and to learn as much as possible.

Free Manatee Printables
So with the activity book as a guide, I supplemented the lesson with manatee printables from About.com. Included in the printables is a: word search, crossword puzzle, coloring page, and printable manatee craft (a door hanger). My children completed most of the pages and 2 of them chose to make the door hanger. I think these printables helped to keep the lesson fun.

Manatee Documentary

We have an Amazon Prime membership which means we can watch their videos offered on Prime for free. I was so happy to find that they currently have a manatee documentary which held the children's interest for most of it's 47 minutes. None of the other material we had covered the fact that sailors of old thought manatees were mermaids (or maybe I missed that part). So the title Endangered Mermaids: The Manatees of Florida  and the explanation of it in the beginning was helpful.

Manatee Games
We didn't play any of these games at SaveTheManatee.org because I didn't find them until after our lessons were complete. But they look extremely educational.