News from the Outdoors

This week at Woodend marked the kick off of our bird unit! The detectives used their sleuthing skills to observe what makes a bird a bird. We discovered that birds have hollow bones, wings, feathers, specialized beaks, and unique feet. On Monday, both classes took to different areas of Woodend to build giant bird nests! The AM class enjoyed transforming into baby chicks and reading a story in their nest at the lookout.

This week we also found a toad at the look out, as well as noticing signs of the fox by the den the meadow!

On Wednesday, we talked more about the how birds use their unique set of features to live in the habitats around them. The AM class observed the pond habitat and discussed how a bird may have webbed feet and different feathers to live by water. The PM class enjoyed a visit from Ms. Susan, where she taught the kids about different birds nests that we might find around Woodend! We took her up to the giant nest we made on Monday, before flying like birdies down the meadow.

The Detectives were also tasked this week with helping a baby bird “grow” by using science! We used a baking soda and vinegar mixture to create gas to fill our balloon bird! The Detectives got to make a hypothesis on what would happen when we mixed all the ingredients, and enjoyed watching the balloon grow once we completed the experiment!

On Thursday we made an exciting an exciting discovery in the log rolling area by the Briarly entrance to Audubon! A woodpecker had done some excavating on an old stump, and uncovered an old black rat snake nest! The eggs were most likely laid last summer, and we observed had never been fertilized. We observed the leathery texture of the snake eggs, and compared them the feeling of birds eggs that we might find around Woodend.

News from the Classroom

The Detectives continued our bird-tastic exploration inside the classwork! On Monday, our mindfulness lesson went along with our theme, discussing how we can even be mindful with our eyesight (just like a bird’s super sense). We used our mindful bodies to stay as still as possible and just observe the world around us with our eyes!

We used feathers to create art this week, painting with feathers instead of paint brushes, made our own flying paper towel roll birds, and added feathers and googly eyes to the play-dough to create our own birdies!

This weeks block challenge was to create bird boxes for the toy birds, just like the ones we see around Woodend. The detectives also created their own bird stories with birds, bird boxes, eggs and nests in the dramatic play area! We also pulled out bird puzzles, created wings with tinker toys, and pretended to be birds pecking for seeds in the lab table.

On Thursday, we talked about different types of beaks on birds and how they use them as tools for eating! Since we discussed the proboscis of a butterfly last week, we introduced the hummingbird beak to the Detectives, using eye droppers to demonstrate how the hummingbird sucks up nectar.

Books we Read

Whose Chick are You? by Nancy Tafuri

Birdsongs by Betsy Franco

Duck and Goose by Tad Hills

Weekly Top Hits

Playground Gate

I met a Blue Jay at the playground gate,

That Blue Jay was my playmate,

That Blue Jay went jay, jay, jay, jay, jay, jay, jay, jay, jay, jay, jay!

(Repeat with any bird and their bird sound)

 

Spoiler Alert: Next week we are continuing to talk about birds!