What does a bird say?

Birds are a thing of interest right now.  I’ve been slowly introducing bird books to the girls, beginning with thumbing through them asking which birds they liked.  I’d have a map nearby (unless the book included it) and point to the whereabouts of the birds chosen and descriptions of each.  We’ve moved on to games that are mostly matching games that test their ability to see and match patterns and shapes.  Today we used a tile memory game as a matching game and an opportunity to discuss different kinds of birds and where they live or what they are known for. I gave Lily one set of tiles & maggie the matching set. They took turns laying them down while the other matched it with their tile.  Then I read the bird type and we looked it up in the bird encyclopedia.  Additionally we used an audio book of bird songs to learn the songs they sing. This was a lot of fun for the girls & it kept them seated & interested.

Pretty simple, you see on the table an encyclopedia of birds, the time matching game, an actual b encyclopedia, a bird pairing game that we didn’t get to today, the songbook and the red rods in the background.  I’ve been leaving out more sensorial stuff this week in hopes the girls would try more extensions, which seems to be working.

We’ve recently started using an encyclopedia where I pick a Topic we might be talking about, in this case birds and I ask the girls to get me the encyclopedia they think we might learn about that subject in.  Bird is fairly easy.  Maggie immediately picked up on the beginning sound and ran off for the encyclopedia.  She got lost somewhere between the A and D because a particular picture stood out that she suddenly had to know about right then & there so we chatted about that and moved on to the B enclosed is where we put it on the table & looked at the parts of a bird for the first time together. I explained they had bones too and we studied that diagram.  Maggie pointed out their body organs were similar too.  She realizes animals have hearts like we do.  Etc.  but it started with the heart.  We didn’t linger in the book too long before we started matching tiles.

Above Maggie listens to different bird songs in the bird song book.

In the photo above Lily takes a break before starting her tiles.  She has lined them up and is having ‘her turn’.  In the beginning, when we first started sitting at a table to learn it wasn’t topics that were long winded. It was short & required getting Up for movement breaks to retain & come back for more information.   We eventually moved into a ‘your turn, my turn’ understanding.  You can have your turn but I get mine.  And it works.   Lily was recently not using her iPad as a turn but started again the part 2 days. She does like to bring her animals to the table & sometimes they actually help her to focus.  She will often play with them in between working also.   Maggie is reading a bird type in the picture to the right.

Lily & Maggie take turns matching timed together.

Maggie is learning how to look up information by watching me. Something mesmerized her like math & numbers when I could find the bird from our tiles in the bird encyclopedia.  Because we flipped through many different pages to see the difference between the types of birds the girls learned there are different types of sparrows, like dogs.   She enjoys knowing we have books where we can look things up that we are studying.

Above the girls match a bird tile to their bird book.

As we match the tiles we refer to the bird book to see variations & habitats.

Their finished work.

This is the book the kids and I have fallen in love with.  It’s partner is the Eastern half.  It’s a great way to add something different to a lesson.  The girls loved mimicking the sounds and pressing the buttons to control the tracks (bird songs). Math was applied indirectly as a result as we’ve been talking about less than and more than.   Overall, it helped to keep them interested in the next bird & looking up the next piece of information.