So far this year, the Bird Project has been my favourite
thing. I had lots of fun planning it, and the kids got really into it. Since
doing the project, I have become fascinated by birds! I always knew they were
beautiful creatures, but I never truly appreciated why they’re so flippin
great!
I decided to do the bird project as my boss was covering
hibernation, and usually she does a little on migration too. I took migration
and claimed it as my own, and completely took it over for 3 weeks. Don’t worry,
my boss was happy out with that! The children must have picked up on how
passionate I grew about the topic, because one little boy said to me: “Migration?
Or YOURgration?” which I thought was pretty funny.
Circle Time
We started the topic of migration and birds at circle time.
We sat on a mat together and I took out some pictures of different birds I had
printed off online and laminated. We discussed what we knew about hibernation
and then wondered how birds cope with the cold weather and little food. I
introduced the topic of migration, and we focussed on two birds- the swallow
and the cuckoo. We had a look at this fantastic book:
I found it in my local library and it became the backbone of
the project. It’s really neat, ‘cos you can look at these beautiful photographs
of the birds and then listen to their songs! The kids loved matching the birds
to their songs.
Bird Feeders
After discussing birds that migrate, we had a little look at
some birds who stick around at Winter. We had a look at the robin in
particular. Then we talked about the importance of feeding the birds at Winter.
This inevitably lead to making bird feeders! We did extremely simple ones- just
a pipe cleaner with Cheerios threaded on. The kids had a good time, and they
were working on their fine motor skills, unbeknown to them!
Paper Birds
Next, we made our own bird decorations. I used a tutorial on
Pretty Pointless Things’ blog, the birds were so pretty and they fit into our
project perfectly. Here’s the tutorial:
And here’s ours!
We added googly eyes and the kids painted them instead of using patterned paper;
made them a little more pre-school-y. They hung in our room a little while, and
then after the 3 weeks the kids took them home.
Headbands
The next part of our project was devoted to feathers. We
discussed birds’ feathers, and how they can keep them dry and help them fly.
Then we decided we wanted to do some flying of our own! This was the simplest
project, as all we did was glue feathers onto strips of card and tie elastic to
the back to keep them on our heads. Here’s mine:
Attractive, right? I wore mine all week; at the shopping
centre, in the library, in the restaurant having dinner with my boyfriend... I
kid. But I did love it.
Flying!
Once we had our fabulous headbands on, we went to the Big
Hall for some excercises. As birds, of course. Here’s our warm-up excercise:
We start off as a little egg, sitting in our nest.
(Sit, curled up small on the mat)
Then- CRACK!- we hatch out, baby birds!
(Burst out of the curled-up-ball, but stay sitting down)
Oh what a long time we’ve spent in that egg, let’s stretch!
(Sit down and stretch out arms and legs)
We can’t fly down to the ground to get some tasty worms, so
we’ll have to ask our Mommas to get us some...
(Bounce on haunches, say ‘cheep cheep!’)
Now that we’re big and strong, let’s stretch these wings of
ours.
(Stand up and stretch arms. Slowly flap them)
Ooh, they work quite nicely, let’s go for a little fly!
(Start walking around the room, slowly flapping arms up and
down)
Wow, this is fun! Let’s see how fast we can fly!
(Run around, flapping arms!)
Now it’s time to make our own nest and lay our own eggs!
(Return to mat, curl up in an egg shape again)
And finally, a bit of drawing...
When it came to free-time, the kids really enjoyed reading the Birdsong book together, and even took out my laminated photos to draw the birds! I hung their efforts on our wall:
I love the blackbird, what a face!
And that’s our bird project! We had so much fun, I hope you
enjoyed our project too! :)
