Bird Unit Study

This is our first unit study of the year and if you’re new around here, you’ll know I like to dive deeper into one science or social study unit at time. So, instead of doing history every other day and science the other days, we like to just do science every day for about 3-5 weeks (depending on what we’re studying) and then switch and do social studies. This has saved my mental sanity from trying to wrap my head around two different studies at a time and really helps so if we miss a day, I never feel like it’s a ripple effect of missing lessons. When we’re in a unit study we try to integrate all the other subjects - math, literacy, art, music, ect. and it’s all based around one theme - so this one is birds!

Here is what we’re using and a few thoughts:

Main Curriculum: The Good and the Beautiful Bird Unit. We’re following the lessons in here and then utilizing their Birdwatching Notebook to observe and record birds when we’re out bird watching. I bought the birds read aloud book pack and would highly recommend it. I didn’t get the Audubon book for older kids yet. But, we love the Songbird Study book - so visually inviting and Mission Migration is such a wonderful book with a GREAT story. We paired it with this video - Migration: A Yearning for Home and it is seriously so perfect and spiritually uplifting. We are keeping our science journals and any printouts from the curriculum in a Canson mixed media notebook this unit. Now that I’ve seen the new TGTB student journals though, I am really looking forward to when we can use those for future science units!

Supplemental Curriculum: I collaborated with Idlewild & Company and they sent me their The Organic Studies to use along side our bird unit. There are about 2 weeks worth of ideas in here so I am excited to pull from this. I also love the rest of the curriculum guide because it’s a nature study organized by the alphabet - A for Amphibians, B for Birds, C for Caterpillars. It’s super fun and I am planning to pull from this for more as we study different nature topics this year. You can download samples of their units if you want to see more.

Free Supplements for Younger Kids: TGTB unit is really for grades 3-8 and I would agree with this. Even some of the material I still have to simplify for my fourth graders or they get super bored. I have a 5 year old and 3 year old and so when we do studies like this, I like to find free and low prep supplements to bring in for them. Here are a bunch of free Kindergarten & Preschool Bird Themed Printables and free Coloring Pages that we’re planning to use. There are a bunch of math and literacy activities in here. One thing I’ve learned is that kids can often enjoy doing the same activity over and over. In that first link there is a book you color the birds and write what color they are and my sons have made multiple copies of these books already so don’t be afraid to print and reuse activities if you find your kids are highly interested in them.

Books: There are always so many books to recommend, but I am only going to share our favorites and ones I’d actually buy to keep on your bookshelf.

For Preschool/Kindergarten: There is a Bird on Your Head and Are You My Mother? are my boys favorites. I collected a whole bunch of picture books at the library and we read most of them, but we’ve read these other two over and over and over and over.

Reference Books: The Big Book of Birds is one of our favorites. All of the Big Books always are. We’re also pulling from Natural World and Nature Anatomy.

Then, I only bought three other books. I was very selective on which ones I added to our collection because I am running out of book space, haha!. First, I got the Birds of Utah Field Guide and it is PERFECT. If you’re in Utah, this is a must have and if you’re not, I hope you can find one for your state. We LOVE it because you can identify the birds by color so it’s simple and easy for the kids to utilize! It’s visually appealing and easy to bring around with us on our bird watching adventures. In the Amazon reviews you’ll see someone bought two copies of the book and made one into flashcards which I thought was a great idea.

Another book I bought was a recommendation from my friend Darby over at Life With the Hawleys called The Boy Who Drew Birds which is an absolute beautiful living story book about John James Audubon - a forefather in the world of bird studies. It’s gorgeous and faith based.

Last, I ended up buying the Backyard Birdsong Guide because this has actual bird songs in it. I originally held off on buying this because I was hopeful this bird sounds website would be sufficient - which we liked, but it has ads and just not super easy for the kids to pull up a navigate independently so I went with this book instead and I think the kids will really like it. We are definitely bringing it along with us on our nature walks.

We got the Bird Nature Reader from The Good and The Beautiful we’ve already read. So we are using The Burgess Bird Book for Children as our read aloud and the girls are loving that so far.

Bird Cams: Here is also a fun live bird cam we’ve pulled up and used a few times - All About Birds - Watch Live Cams.

Seek App: This app identifies a species and it’s class based on a picture. If you don’t have this app, download it now! We’ve had this for probably over a year and my kids use it all the time! Whenever we’re on a walk or traveling - it’s so fun to identify the plants and animals around us. I just keep it on my phone and the kids have a whole collection of pictures. It was especially fun on our Pacific Northwest Trip.

Games and Extras: Snatch from The Good and The Beautiful and we borrowed Match a Pair of Birds from a neighbor. We LOVE this bird puzzle because even though its 500 pieces you’re building individual birds. The back of the pieces are color coordinated so it does make it a bit easier and even my 5 year old could help. We also have Sticker By Number: Birds and the girls really love to do these.

Art: We’re working on drawing birds in our sketch books and also the bird watching books and utilizing Drawing 100 Fun & Easy Birds. We’ll be doing some watercoloring…here is a link to all our favorite art supplies including our watercolors, pens, and notebooks.

Sensory Bins: We’ve used bird seed as our base the last two weeks and for the next two weeks I am planning on changing it up and doing a Build A Nest theme. The first week we kept the vowels in it with these alphabet puzzle blocks because my Kindergartner is working on vowels and their sounds. The next week I added in some simple scoops and bowls for play. Each week I’ve also kept some wooden eggs in the bin and these have been a fun addition. I also have some old stuffed animal birds we’ve been able to use that the kids have played with. If you’re wondering where we got our feathers - I just had the kids grab them from our chickens, haha!

Field Trips: Obviously these are in Utah, but if you happen to be here we are planning to go to the Tracy Avery Park, Sea Quest, and Paul Reams Nature Reserve. We’ve already been on one bird watching trip into the mountains and literally saw zero birds, haha so we’re going to try again next week and bring a few of the other places in.

Binoculars: We just have a cheap pair I got off Amazon a few years ago. The exact brand isn’t available anymore, but here is a really similar one with good reviews.

Bird Feeders: We have this bird feeder and a similar hummingbird feeder to this one. A few years ago I bought bird seed off Amazon and we had very few birds, but I heard the best thing to do was buy local bird feed so I just bought a mix at our local grocery store and it has been excellent! We set both our bird feeders on our patio table which is right outside our school room and we’ve seen A TON of birds at the one feeder. Almost all Sparrows. We had the feeder stuck on our window, but I think since it was so close to us, they didn’t come as often. But, once we moved it down onto our table - it’s been fantastic and we see birds all day long — sometimes 5-6 at a time! It’s been a lot of fun and I have approximately 100 bird videos on my phone from the kids recording every. single. sighting. We have seen some hummingbirds, but none feeding so I think we need to hang it up and move it away from our other feeder. In years past, we’ve done homemade bird feeders, but we’ve done that a lot (the ones with peanut butter and pinecones and also wooden ones we’ve painted) so I am not sure we’ll do that again this time around.

Owl Pellet Dissection: This is an optional extension to one of lessons in our TGTB unit and we are planning to do this. You’ll definitely want a kit and so this is the one we went with.

Are you planning a bird unit soon? Let me know if you use any of these ideas of what you plan to do! We’ve got a few more weeks to go on this unit and we’re anxious to get outside and see some more birds!