Category Archives: Birds
Bird Feeders!
I’m so excited!! Look what I got in the mail on Friday at school! I visited with the nice folks from The Cornell Lab of Ornithology last year at NSTA (National Science Teachers Association) and found out about their program to have elementary aged students help with bird counting–this is something my Kinders can do! 🙂 I get a newsletter from them monthly and about 2 months ago, there was an application for the Adopt-a-school program. We were chosen!!
This is what was inside the box:
A window bird feeder, bird seed, and 10 student binoculars for bird watching!! 
I can’t wait to show my kiddos! We already have 5 bird feeders outside our class room windows and a poster near the windows so the kiddos can identify the birds (and squirrels) that visit our feeders. This will help us to bring the birds up close to the windows and let my kiddos have a chance to watch them with their binoculars.
Thanks to Pennington Bird Seed Company for choosing us!
Kristen 🙂
Bird Beaks
About a week ago, we explored different kinds of bird beaks. I attended a workshop at NSTA in April that was all about My Big Backyard where the presenters shared an exploration of bird beaks.
I collected a variety of materials that birds might eat or use:
Fish (found in the bait section of Wal-Mart)
Worms (found in the bait section of Wal-Mart)
Birdseed
String
We also used wooden skewers, spoons, and clothespins to represent different kinds of beaks.
The kids then had a chance to test out each beak.
I buried the worms in a little bit of soil to make it more realistic. 🙂
The string that a bird might use to make a nest. 
The kids put what they were able to pick up in their stomachs (cups) 🙂
The “warm” sticker on the cup above was from another activity we did–I needed more cups so each kiddo had one. 🙂
The kids loved it and we created a chart in our notebooks to show what each beak was able to pick up easily.
Kristen 🙂
Bird feeder Visitors
We have four bird feeders right outside our classroom window and we’ve had some fun visitors in the past few days:
This crazy squirrel hung there forever and the kids were so excited to see him!
This red cardinal stayed for a few minutes, but caught the attention of everyone!
Kristen 🙂
Science Work Station
Here are a few pictures of our Science Work Station. We have had our first bird visitors to our window bird feeders this week so the kids are excited to watch for different kinds of birds feeding on our feeders (we have four on shepards’ crooks in the yard and two suction cupped to the window).
Kristen 🙂
Kristen's Kindergarten 