Bird Unit Study: Free and Fun Ways to Learn About Birds

I figured that now was a good time to start finding materials for a free bird unit study since my 4 year old asks about a nest in a tree that we pass each day on the way to the park.

This study could possibly last for a long time. There are so many different types of birds; and, there is much to learn about birds in general. But as usual, I will let the bird unit lesson ideas that I find online dictate how much we learn. Also, if the children start to lose interest then that's a clear sign that it's time to move on to the next topic.

Swans on a Lake

All About Birds

 

AllAboutBirds.org is a site run by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Ornithology is the study of birds. (I had to look that up.) On this site you can identify over 600 North American species using the Cornell bird guide.
You can also listen to bird songs. And there are numerous bird videos you can watch on the site via their You Tube channel. I am barely skimming the surface of what all is available on All About Birds. Check it out for yourself to see how much potential there is to use this site to form bird unit lesson ideas.

Here is an example of one, of the many, videos on AAB. This one is about the Acorn Woodpecker.





 

Bird Coloring and Activity Book

 

Feeder Birds will keep any bird enthusiast very busy during Science time. The book can be used in conjunction with the All About Birds site to maximize learning.

 

Bird Crafts

 

Hands down DLTK Teach has the best bird crafts for preschoolers. Little hands can do a lot of coloring, cutting, and gluing; and, you can talk to them about birds while helping them construct their crafts.

I am down to only 1 preschooler so I need some bird activities that will keep slightly older children interested. Family Fun has quite a few crafts that seem to be for varying ages. I will probably let the children browse the bird craft section and choose what looks good to them. Or maybe by seeing what others have come up with they will come up with their own bird craft ideas.

Birds of Prey

 

Wedge Tailed Eagle 

Over the years we have checked out a few books from the library on the more "aggressive" birds. I wonder if the fact that I have 3 boys contributes the extreme interest in birds of prey in our house. That, and the fact that we see turkey vultures perched on a tower for the power lines almost daily on our walk to the park. It is a bit off putting. But our walks there are never dull.

Anyway, here is an activity book on Oregon Zoo Birds of Prey. Most of the pages are applicable to these birds in general, not just the ones in Oregon. This book doesn't have any coloring and it appears to be geared for children who are able to read the book and do some of the activities themselves. However, I do not see why it could not be used, as a guide, as a lesson plan for birds of prey.

 

Birds of Texas

 

We live in the great Lone Star State. And a few years ago when we moved into our house, our oldest became interested in the birds that perch in the tree in our backyard. So, I printed out Learn About Texas Birds. I cannot tell you what a great resource this book is.

My son and I compared it to the unit about birds in his 8th grade science book. And almost all of the same information was contained in both. But we got the added benefit of learning about Texas birds in our area as well. The book has activities in, like: how to make a bird feeder out of a milk jug, crossword puzzles, and how to make a paper birdhouse.

Birds on Netflix

 

I used to spend a lot of time finding free videos in the public domain. I still agree that there is a lot of great material out there. But since we joined Netflix, it has been a huge time saver to check there first. I have the streaming service (no DVDs) and I still manage to find quite a bit of educational material. For this lesson we have already viewed the first episode of The Life of Birds with David Attenborough.

I spent a good bit of the video discussing with the children what evolutions say versus what the Word of God says about the creation of birds. It made for an interesting discussion and the children left the video understanding that we hold everything that we hear up to the Word of God. Used that way, I think that the video series will work just fine for our needs.

 

Bird Curriculum/Bird Unit Lesson Plans

 

I was going to link to some specific bird lesson plans. But I think that there is sufficient information in the resources already listed so that you can come up with your own lesson plan. That's pretty much how we do things around here. Even when I have tried planning out our learning in the past; we have always wound up having to be flexible and willing to explore other topics, depending on the children's interests.

Back to the Free Readers on Google Books

I have managed to rack up my highest library fines to date, a whopping $67.00. We check out 50 books (the limit) at a time and I am very careful about due dates because of that. But recently we had family visit from out of town and I was having so much fun with them that I didn't think about the books until they were a week overdue. And it didn't help that I didn't receive the reminder notices that I usually get by email from the library. I was missing a lot of my mail on Yahoo until I switched over to their new format from the classic one.

Anyway, so the  next time that I go to the library I am going to ask for mercy regarding my fines based on past good behavior. But in the meantime, the kids still need some good books to read. The little ones have been enjoying the level 1 and 2 beginner reader books. And I want to keep the love of reading alive. So I went through the links on my post about free primers, readers, and spellers.

Last school year Smiley was going through the McGuffey Primer. I thought about continuing on to the first reader. But  I think that he will find the first Kendall Reader much more interesting. So, I printed the book out yesterday and bound it using my handy dandy heavy duty stapler. And I then covered the spine with duct tape to keep little fingers from getting hurt on the staples.

The first Aldine Reader seems very girly. So GG will enjoy reading that one. I did not print out the stories that had fairies and witches in them. But there is still over 100 pages of reading material. So the book should keep her busy for a bit.

And I printed out Poor Richard's Almanac by Benjamin Franklin for my 12 year old. I discovered that book on the school library shelf when I was that age and I really enjoyed it. Hopefully he will too.

I also found an alphabet picture book, but; I'm debating whether or not to print that out for Jr. I don't think that the black and white pictures will hold his interest. So we'll keep using Starfall to learn letters and phonics  and I'll probably try to find some ABC books that we can read online from Netlibary.

Free Piano Lessons for Kids

I found PianoLessonsForKids on YouTube and can't wait for Smiley (my 6 year old) to give the free lessons a try. I can't even begin to tell you how much he enjoys having a keyboard. He has been calling himself a "music artist" since his dad gave him a tiny, old school Casio that used to be his when he was a teenager. Smiley has since moved on to a bigger keyboard (rest in peace old Casio) and he really wants to learn how to play it.

The instructor for the lessons is an actual piano teacher who wants to reach and teach as many people as possible how to play the piano. You can find all of the free piano lessons for kids videos on You Tube or you can also access them through the Free Online Piano Lessons for Kids website.

Here is the first of the 20 free lessons.

Gardening Unit Study

I have wanted to try my hand at gardening for a couple of years now. But the poor soil in my yard has been a deterrent. However, I recently started doing a lot of research on container gardening. It doesn't seem as difficult as trying to grow food in the ground. So I am going to give it a try.

I want to involve the children as much as possible. So, it just seems right to incorporate gardening into our homeschool.  Currently we are still going through our agriculture study. So, gardening will fit right in.

Below are the free educational resources that I was able to find online. There is actually a lot of good material available on gardening. Praise God! I told the children that we will be purchasing our soil and necessary materials this weekend. And then we will begin our unit on gardening using the resources listed. I hope you find them useful as well.

Coloring and Activity Books
5 a Day the Preschool Way
Do You Know Where Fruits and Vegetables Come From?
Food Fun
Gardening is Great
Growing Gardeners
Meet the Bean: Soybeans are Everywhere
Old Orchard
Organic Farming w/ Lily the Ladybug
Spuddy Buddy


Educator Guides w/ some Activities Included
Awesome Agriculture: Soybeans
Organization of Living Things study
Pondering Plants
Seeds We Eat
Spring 

A Complete Unit Study
While searching for coloring books on gardening I came across a great unit study called Seeds, by Gwendolyn Nicodemus. I think my children are too young to benefit from it this year. But it will definitely come in handy if we repeat the study in a few years.

The Plan
This is the part where I map out how I plan on using the above free resources. In an ideal life, I would just refer back to this once I start the lesson and follow the plan and have a smooth homeschooling experience. But over the years I have learned that all plans are just that - plans. I have found out (the hard way) to be flexible and to be willing to shorten, lengthen, or skip material - depending on what's working at the time. But I still like to map things out anyway so that I don't go into a new study unprepared.

I am going to print out pages 3,5, and 7 from the 5 a Day book on card stock and put them on the wall as posters. I'll do that before we begin our garden unit study. Then I'll introduce the lesson with Gardening is Great and use this copywork* with it.Organic Farming is an excellent reading book; so, we'll do that next. Here are parts 1, 2, and 3 of the copywork for that - in case it takes a few days to get through the reading. Then we'll move on to Meet the Bean. This activity book does a good job of explaining how seeds grow and there are several hands on activities that look like they will be fun to try. Here is the Bean copywork - 1 and 2.

Once our container garden actually starts to grow we will do as many activities as possible from Pondering Plants. And I'll finish up with Growing Gardeners to help review some of what we have learned.

*The copywork needs to printed out on the landscape setting of your printer.

Milk And Dairy Mini Unit Study

Milk Coloring and Activity Books
How We Get Our Milk 
Milk Matters with Buddy Brush
Polly Pride's Activity and Coloring Book

Where are the Milk Group Foods activity page
The Yummy Fun Book of Low Fat Milk

Valentine's Cards in Homeschool?

We have never celebrated Valelntine's Day in our homeschool. I'm not against doing that, but it never really seemed like something that we needed to do. And none of the children ever requested that we did.

But I have been contemplating whether or not to exchange Valentine's cards this year. I think it would be fun to have the children each make a card and then they could exchange them. The only thing is that I am pretty sure that with 3 boys I will get a couple of "that's for girls" statements. But I'm sure GG would really enjoy making anything that is pink or purple with hearts on it. LOL.

I still have until February 14th to figure it out. I think I'll see how the tone of school is going that day and then I'll decide if that's something that we might pursue. I think that the main thing is that I encourage the children daily to demonstrate the love of Christ. That is love 365 days a year. As long as we keep Him as our focus then I don't think it really matters one way or other if we celebrate a day of love once a year.


If you are planning on celebrating Valentine's Day in your homeschool then you may find this list of printable Valentine cards for kids helpful.

Martin Luther King Jr. Book Online

Yesterday I told the children that we would be off from school today because of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. And my 6 year old turned to me and said, who's Dr. Martin Luther King? I told him we would talk about it the next day and this morning I woke up early and scrambled to find a Martin Luther King Jr. book online.

I remembered finding one from scholastic a few years back when my oldest first learned about the great civil rights leader. I searched unsuccessfully to find that one. But, I am happy to report that Scholastic has another Martin Luther King Jr Book Online that is free.

The book is for grades K-4. It's a little over 20 pages but it is has just enough information to introduce little ones to Dr. King. It looks like you have to be a subscriber to print the book out the way it was intended to look. But you can view a full screen version for free and read the book directly from your screen. That is what I did with the children. They found the book very interesting and asked me a lot of questions afterward.

Eventually, I did find the book that I was looking for. It's called Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Dream. However, it appears that it is no longer free. You now have to have a subscription to Scholastic's mini-books in order to print most of them out. But I did come across one more Martin Luther King Jr. Book online - Our Friend Martin. This is probably best suited towards preschoolers.