Horn Homeschool: Week 6

I'm seriously behind in posting about our homeschooling ventures!

Week 6 we moved on from our letter A themed units and progressed to B with our study on BIRDS.

First we read and talked about what makes a bird a bird (feathers, backbone, lays eggs). Then we looked at a bird's life cycle.

Next we studied nests and tried to make them ourselves. Making nests is NOT for the faint at heart! Even though we cheated and used playdough and string nest-building was seriously hard work. And I don't think any real bird would like our end product. It was a valuable exercise though. Just as real birds, Chloe and I gathered sticks only ONE at a time and then brought them back to our pseudo-nests. We were both tired out after about 20 sticks in the pile. Birds sure are hard workers!

Additionally, I read books with Chloe in the afternoons focusing in on 3 specific birds during the week (owls, geese, hummingbirds). And then we'd do some fun craft to go along with that particular bird. We also touched a bit on migration. (Did you know that hummingbirds migrate?)

And because I'm a nerd bird-themed edibles were required for our week's study. Owl pancakes and chocolate bird nests with gum drop eggs were on the week's menu. And scrambled eggs of course!

We ended the week by reading about birdwatching and using a field guide. (I highly recommend Jim Arnosky's Crinkleroot's Guide to Knowing Birds as a kid-friendly primer to birding.) I had checked out a simple bird guide from the library which categorized about 30 common backyard birds. Armed with our bird guide in hand, we headed to a local nature center. There we observed birds and the kids got to use kiddie binoculars. We also did a short hike and then talked to the naturalist about the birds we saw (she even helped Chloe use the bird guide to identify chickadees).

We did some work with "ir" words and also continued with our handwriting, math and chapter book reading too. All in all a great week!