Back Yard Bird Exploration Unit, Montessori Science & Nature At Home

These guys are very bird focused this Spring with all of the new life and activity in the yard. We spent a morning outside with some fun materials to explore a few facts about birds.

I pulled out a folding table and filled it with bird goodies. Xander is holding a set of bird and nest cards I made from wikipedia.  You can find everything you need here to make these should you desire. I  had a few different fallen nests that I had collected on the table. Our Montessori Bird puzzle and labelling set. Montessori Animal Puzzle Cabinet with 5 Puzzles Montessori Animal Puzzle Activity Set
This activity set includes a basic set of animals to match your animal puzzle cabinet. They include black line masters and labels for the parts of each animal. Ava loves these puzzles and activity sets. You can make them so easily though. You could draw or print an image of a bird and laminate/ cut into pieces. Print a duplicate black and white image - one with labelled parts (control) and one without. Then make a set of labels. This way you could use a larger image and of a real bird!!

We also had our magnifying glasses and pocket scope and some great books. We used this set of cards of birds and their feet.

The bird fact sheets above are are from various spots on the net, and I made a few more to match our Safari Ltd Backyard Birds TOOB

The main nests we see in the yard are Cardinals, Robins and Grackles. We also get visitors to the gardens from humming birds, chickadees, Blue Jays and many more.  Above is our Backyard Guide that I made for the kids a couple years ago.

Drawing and tracing birds 😃

We had great fun building nests!!  We gathered some great material from the yard to build our own nests. It's hard to beat mud mixing!!

Filling our feeders 

Waiting for friends to visit our feeders 😃

I will say that this was fun, but the majority of our interest in learning about birds has come through some amazing experiences, that I will show a few highlights from. 

Saving a fallen baby Robin. This tiny (mainly skin really) Robin was hidden in the grass and I almost stepped on the poor babe. We waited and watched for a day to see if mamma was going to find him/her. We decided to place her in a nearby nest of eggs to give her a chance of survival. We would not normally do this but decided to try. This is the very zoomed in picture I got of her the morning after we put her in this mamma Robins nest!! We watch mommy and daddy feed baby off and on all day.

We came home from vacation last spring to find a family of owls living and growing in our backyard. This was an incredible experience for us all. We did a lot of listening to them chat with one another, and it was incredible during feeding time.

Mommy keeping an eye on things...

This is Frederick who lives at my sisters house. He is a funny guy.

During this visit there were about three geese in the yard with nests. This was such a great learning experience (how lucky for children living on farms), they had all hatched before we left.

Victoria Butterfly Gardens, amazing birds!

We visit our local Nature Museum often!! They have the most amazing floor dedicated to birds!! They also have a fantastic play bird clinic.

Visiting our local Bird Sanctuary

The kids have learned an incredible amount through books, tv and online. I do however keep a bucket of our favourite bird materials and books for the kids to check out at will.

Thanks for visiting with us!