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!
- Northern Cardinal Lapbook & Unit Study
- How to Make Easy DIY Bird Feeders
- Easy and Fun Nature Study: Beautiful Birds
Hugs and love ya,
