Wesselman Woods Nature Preserve

Wesselman Woods Nature Preserve

Friday, October 12, 2012

Week 1: Introduction and Songbirds

Welcome to Trails & Tales!  We are looking forward to six weeks together learning all about our Feathered Friends! 

We began by learning all of our names and our favorite bird.  Maybe of our friends don't have a favorite bird yet so we decided our goal was to get everyone a favorite bird by the end of our six weeks. 

Then we learned what makes a bird.  All birds have wings, feathers, a beak, hollow bones and two legs.  We also learned that not all birds can fly. 

Then we used what we learned to sing this song, which we will sing all six weeks:

The Bird Song

This is the way we flap our wings, flap our wings, flap our wings.  This is the way we flap our wings just like a dove.
...Peck at a worm, just like a robin
...Use our talons, just like an owl
...Paddle our feet, just like a duck
...Drink nectar, just like a hummingbird
...Catch insects, just like a swallow
...Crack seeds, just like a finch
Next we observed birds through the window in the nature center.  We saw several different types and even heard a few.  Then we headed back to to the classroom to paint what we saw using feathers as paint brushes. 
After we were finished painting, we came back to the circle with this fun rhyme:
“Fly with the Birds”
Fly high, fly low
Fly fast, fly slow
Let’s dive for a drink
Let’s rest on a hill
We then got to play some music to Lisa Monet’s Five Little Chickadees I learned about from Flannel Friday friends Andrea at Rovingfiddlehead Kidlit and  Katie at Storytime Secrets introduced me to. 

I printed these Chickadee tags onto milk paper to put on the flannel board and as I removed them from the board during the song, I put them into my nest puppet I had hidden behind my back.  When the birds came back to build the nest in my hair at the end of the song, the nest went on top of my head! 

Then we sang this fun little rhyme:
Finger rhyme:  Five Little Birds
Five little birds who have no home (hold up five fingers)
Five little trees in a row (arms up like a tree)
Come build your nests in our branches tall (cup hands to form nest)
We’ll rock you to and fro (rock hands)
We then read the board-book version of Are You My Mother? by P.D. Eastman and played a game where each person got a shaker made from a 35 mm flim canister filled with different items.  Each canister had a pair in the group and we took turned "chirpping" and finding our "mothers."  The kids did great! 
To learn a little about nests, we read My Baby Blue Jays by John Berendt.  A cute little story of a Blue Jay family from the balcony of a New York City townhouse. 
Lastly, we went on a hike to gather nesting material.  The kids found convinient piles of leaves, grass, yarn, feathers and twigs along the trial to put in their bags.  We headed back to the classroom to make nests with playdough and their found objects. 
A very busy day, but fun was had by all!
Read Sarah Read is hosting this week's Flannel Friday. Visit the Flannel Friday blog for more information on our group.

1 comment:

  1. Oh my gosh, I love what you're doing with Chickadee! Great idea!

    ReplyDelete