birdjournal

How to Make a Kid’s Fun and Easy Bird Nest Activity

September 21, 2020 | Leave a Comment
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Easy Bird Nest Activity

Nature lovers will adore this project how to make a kid’s fun and easy bird nest activity!

Hands-on, free, and so educational that it will become a favorite in your nature studies.

Birds are fascinating from how they fly, what they eat, how they lay eggs, to how they build amazing nests to rest and raise their young in.

How to Make a Kid's Fun and Easy Bird Nest Activity

A great way to learn about how birds build sturdy safe nests is to try and do it yourself!

Try to create a nest that is safe and warm for an egg and you gain a new appreciation for the amazing job these feathered creatures put together without the use of hands and those oh so helpful thumbs!

Build Your Own Bird Nest

Talk about what birds use a nest for, you may want to grab a couple of the books mentioned below.

Birds use nests as a safe place to lay and hatch their eggs.

Head outdoors and show your child how to gather up all the things a bird might use to create their nest.

If you can find one in your yard it will give you some clues as to what is used to put one together.

Need a little help? Look for dry twigs, green twigs and vines, bits of fluff from plants and animal fur, moss, and long leaves.

I added some bits of string to our pile since birds will use whatever they can find to construct their homes including animal fur, fabric, and other items left behind by humans.

Bring all your items in and place them in a pile so your child can see what there is to work with.

Make a circle with some of the green bendable twigs and tie it off, if you need to use some of that string to secure it.

Add items to the inside to fill it in and build up to create that cup shape of a common bird nest.

Braiding, twisting, tucking, and wrapping helps make your nest more solid and secure. Is your nest ready to hold an egg?

Grab an egg from the fridge and let your child test out their nest.

Birds and Bird Nest Vocabulary

Use these words to create spelling and vocabulary words for your child whatever age or level of learning they are at.

Make flashcards, use them as story starters, have them drawer the definition

Nest
Beak
Raptor
Wingspan
Feather
Incubate
Nestling
Fledgling
Aviary
Hatchling
Rookery
Crest
Crown
Hatch
Parliament
Tarsus

More Bird Activities For Unit Studies

Keep on expanding upon this activity by turning it into a full study with books, games, and some fun activities, I have lots of ideas for you below!

Keep a watch on your backyard and make a Bird Color Bar Graph to keep track of what types of birds visit each day.
Make your own bird from a styrofoam ball and craft feathers to learn the anatomy of a bird.
Put together this free Bird Journal.
Make a bird feeder and/or a birdbath to attract more winged friends to your yard.
Make a Bird Nesting Bag to help local birds with extra supplies to put together their next.
Build a bird house to attract whatever kind of birds you would like. Check out pinterest for house plans for songbirds, woodpeckers, owls, and more.
Draw a Birds Nest in Chalk Pastel with this Youtube tutorial from You Are an Artist
Watch this Bald Eagle Cam in Washington, DC.
For young children pour a think layer of birdseed in a shallow pan and let them practice writing their letters with a finger.
Investigate the different types of bird nests- Burrow, cavity, platform, cup, ground, scrape, mound, pendant and sphere. Identify at least one bird for each type of nest.

Games about Birds

Look at these games about birds.

Books about Birds

A Nest is Noisy

You’ll love these other nature loving and bird activities:

Hugs and love ya,

How to Make an Easy Jumbo Stick Bird Feeder with Kids

September 18, 2020 | 2 Comments
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

Bird Feeder With Kids Activity

How to make an easy jumbo stick bird feeder with kids is a fun project to do with the kids for a bird unit study or just because.

This diy bird feeder covers fine motor skills, problem solving, art, science, following directions, and more.

Making a bird feeder with kids is a great rainy day activity that gets kids asking questions and investigating with little prompting.

Too, creating a craft can just take a few minutes.

How to Make an Easy Jumbo Stick Bird Feeder with Kids

Craft sticks are a homeschool staple for a reason!

They can be used in so many ways and in this case they are the perfect material for a simple bird feeder that your kids can create with a little help from you.

Here is the quick and simple list for this easy bird feeder:

Jumbo Craft Sticks
Wood Glue/Craft Glue
Strong Twine
Bird Seed

Easy directions for making a fun nature craft bird feeder:

We used wide craft sticks as a base and the sides of our simple bird feeder but you can use standard sized if you like.

First, create a base platform by lining your sticks up, 7 jumbo craft sticks is the perfect width for laying the sticks lengthwise.

Jumbo Stick Bird Feeder with Kids

Next, glue a stick across each end of your base.

Avoid using hot glue as the heat outside tends to soften the glue and your birdhouse will fall apart. Instead use a wood glue or tacky craft glue like E6000.

Use colored sticks or outdoor stain if you wish first on your craft sticks if you like.

Then, alternate two sticks in one direction and then two in the other until you have built it up as high as you like.

Allow glue to dry overnight to be sure its secure.

Then, slide 4 long pieces of twine between the top most sticks on each of the 4 sides, tie it off.

Finally, pull the 4 string straight up and tie the end into a knot about 12”-15” up, trim off excess.

Fill with seed and place in a shady tree.

Also, to make your bird feeder last longer than just one season give it two coats of spray sealer before filling and allow it to dry thoroughly to make it water safe.

Bird Vocabulary for Nature Unit Study

Additionally, I’ve added some words for vocabulary, spelling, placing in alphabetical order, and handwriting practice.

Extinct
Endangered
Aviary
Talon
Beak
Flock
Flight
Wingspan
Migrate
Flitter
Raptor
Ornithology

More Bird Activities For Unit Studies

Keep on expanding upon this activity by turning it into a full study with books, games, and some fun activities, I have lots of ideas for you below!

Make a Bird Color Bar Graph to keep track of what types of birds visit each day.
List 5 birds of prey, 5 song birds, 5 Water Fowl, and 5 birds that cannot fly.
Put together this free Bird Journal and and expand this activity into a full unit study.
Put together a Bird Nesting Bag to provide birds with some extra supplies for nest building.
List 3 birds that are now extinct and 3 that are endangered.
Make a sensory bin for younger children with bird seed as the base, add in nest building materials like sticks, and small plastic birds for some educational play.
Try making your own birds nest with found items in the yard like sticks, bits of string, grass, moss, and, vines.
Find out what your state bird is and draw a picture or paint a picture of it.
Research what 5 traits make a bird like feathers, wings, beaks or bills, laying eggs, and an adapted skeleton.
Use craft feathers as manipulatives for counting or to create a craft.
Use a roll of art paper and a yard stick to measure the wingspan of an eagle. Seeing it drawn really gives a better idea of size.

As well as spelling words, I’ve gathered up some bird writing prompts below.

Writing Prompts for Bird Unit Study

If you could be any kind of bird what would you be and why?
One day as I was flying high above I saw…
What do you think the birds are singing about? Put it into words.
You wake up and a giant eagle is waiting outside your window, you climb on his back, tell about your adventures.
What do you think birds do for fun?
What is your favorite bird and why?

Bird Games and Bird Books

Also, look at some of these fun games and books to add to your unit study about birds.

You’ll love these other resources for learning about birds:

Hugs and love ya,

Hands-On Nature Study: Bird Color Bar Graphing Activity

June 13, 2018 | Leave a Comment
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

As we’ve been working our way through the NaturExplorers : Beautiful Birds unit study, we’ve been learning so much about types of birds, what they eat, how they fly, and even where they go when they migrate. In our area, we tend to see the same few species of birds, but I still wanted the kids to be interested in observing them.

NaturExplorers suggested graphing the different kinds of birds we observe in our neighborhood and one of the printable notebooking pages shows kids how to keep up with bird colors by using tally marks. My kids, though, needed a little practice with bar graphing.

So we decided to do a bird color bar graphing activity to keep them watching out for the feathered friends who frequent our family home!

Hands-On Nature Study: Bird Color Bar Graphing Activity

To do this bird color bar graphing activity, you’ll need the following supplies:

Graphing paper
Colored pencils
Clipboard (optional)

You don’t have to use a clipboard, but I found that having it helped the kids keep up with their graphing much better. Especially when they’re outside and they decide to have an impromptu dirt digging session, which happened on more than one occasion.

We used colored pencils for the bird colors we see the most often. We see lots of cardinals and blue jays, so we included red and blue. But we also see lots of brown thrashers and crows, which meant including brown and black as well.

To make the graphing simpler, we started the bars by just coloring the first outer square edges. That way, we’d make even bar shapes going up. If you don’t keep a bar graph neat from the beginning, the bars will look crooked and make the graph almost impossible to read. (Ask me how I know.)

We saw a good number of cardinals, but we saw even more blue jays. I love them both.

But we saw more crows than any other kind of bird! That was pretty neat.

We suspected that it was because we usually saw individual cardinals and blue jays (and even brown thrashers). But crows were always in big groups. It’s common to see 15 of them at once sitting on a telephone line.

We’ll see if the crows stay on top over the next few weeks or if they’re upset by one of the other bird species.

The kids absolutely loved doing this activity. And they were getting some math practice without even knowing it. That’s always a win in my book.

Share these other hands-on nature study activities when you’re learning about birds with the kids!

Hugs and love ya,

American Robin Free Printables, Resources and Crafts

March 1, 2016 | 11 Comments
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

I rounded up some fun American Robin free printables, resources, and crafts to kick off a spring unit study.

American Robin Unit Study Ideas

We pulled out the chalk pastels today, used our Chalk Pastel reference tutorial book that we love, which by the way was created by a homeschool mom and Tiny decided to sketch and do a chalk pastel of the American Robin.

A Seasonal Start in Spring Chalk Pastels

By the way, there is a guide for each season. I love this download because Tiny can read through it on his own.

The American Robin – First Sign of Spring

Sketch of the American Robin @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus

Like his mom, Tiny is not comfortable with art. However, with some coaxing to change the pace of our day, he pulled out the chalk pastels.

I have tried my best through the years to be sure each son views art as enrichment and pleasure. The emphasis has always been on the pleasure of art and not so much the product.

American Robin Chalk Pastel @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus

However, I think he did quite well with this American Robin. Of course, he had to sketch it first so it would be “perfect”.

American Robin Free Printables, Resources and Crafts

I tried to talk him out of it and to use the pastels to free flow, but he really liked the way it came out and more importantly, we enjoyed a change in pace.

We read some online about American Robins and enjoyed listening to the sound of them too. We’ll be looking out to see one or two this year also.

I gathered up some free and fun resources to help round out a unit study or quick study.

North American Red Robin Free Lapbook @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus

Free Printables & Reference

American Robin lapbook
American Robin Menu
American Robin 3 page information
Coloring Page

American Robin Facts for Kids
Fun Facts About the Robin
6 page pdf. along with helpful map, habitat and facts.
Robin bird house plans for a nest shelf
Several American Robin Coloring Pages

Story of Robin Eggs
Bird Feather Types – scroll down close to the end of the page. Nice pictures of feathers and beaks.
Free printable critical reading passage with answers.
Easy find the bird crossword puzzle
How to identify a robin’s nest

50 page pdf download coloring pages of different birds, including the American Robin
Grab my free printables for a bird notebook

(image source: Sweet and Simple Life. Note: please give credit by pinning from original sources.)

Photos, Crafts and YouTube American Robin

Footprint American Robin. Isn’t that the cutest thing ever? What a perfect spring keepsake!
YouTube Mamma bird feeding her young video. There is a cool scene in this video. It is must watch, I but don’t like the music. (so distracting)
American Robin Mini-Documentary YouTube
Eggs hatching photos
Making a rockin’ robin with a cereal box

Paper craft robin
American Robin at a Glance

I hope you can use some of these free and fun resources to squeeze in a few days of learning about spring and the American Red Robin.

You’ll love these other crafts and ideas:

Hugs and love ya,

American Robin Free Printables, Resources and Crafts @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus

Don’t forget to follow BOTH of my Pinterest accounts for more AWESOME pins.

Visit Tina Robertson’s profile on Pinterest.

Free Bird Journal – Hands-on Nature (Coloring & Identification Pages)

April 1, 2014 | 17 Comments
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

If you like this, you’ll love other free unit study resources that are only on my facebook group! Come on over.

Last year when spring rolled around, I shared a Bird Coloring Journal along with a Bird Identification page.

Tiny had been coloring birds for a few years before I shared it last year. So this year and as all kids do, he has grown up a bit more and wanted the Bird Identification page changed around to allow room for a larger sketch and less coloring.

However because I know you still may have younger sweeties and kids who probably like to color, I have added a few more bird coloring pages to the Bird Journal.

Free Bird Journal

I also updated the Bird Identification page to allow room for a larger sketch and to use for an older child.

We like to keep our pages in a notebook with page protectors. We want to get in the habit of bird watching year around so I created this page so that the season could be easily marked when we’re bird watching. But we only seem to do it when we have spring fever.

Download the Bird Journal Coloring Pages Here.

Download the Bird Identification Page Here.

Are y’all planning any special project for spring?

Also, don’t forget to look here at Homeschool Buyer’s Co-op for freebies each summer just in case they offer some nature or science studies!

Looking for some more ideas? No shortage here. Look at these other ideas for studying about birds:

Also, a few more. Scoot over to John Muir Spring Unit Study (and Hands-on Geography Ideas), Middle School Homeschool Science 50 Free Spring Activities and Geoscavenge – A Rock and Mineral Hunt: Day 6 Hands-on Learning.

Hugs and love ya,