Posted in Creation Study

This coming week in our Creation study we will be learning all about birds! Last night I began printing off our activities and getting all my books together, so here are a few things I have found that we will be doing!

Good Books:

The Little Book of Birding by George H. Harrison -- this is a really NEAT book that I found recently. It's a small, square book with real photographs of alllll different kinds of birds, with just 1-2 lines of text on each page. It talks about the thrills of observing and learning about birds.

Birds a Scholastic First Discovery Book - this is a neat little book too, with clear overlays showing parts of the birds and their habitats.

Bald Eagles by James E. Gerholdt

Simon & Schuster's Children's Guide to Birds -- This book has some really neat pictures throughout the book, this will be more of a book to look at than read all the words. We may go through and find our "favorite" bird and read more about it.

What Makes a Bird a Bird? by May Garelick -- Do you know what makes a bird a bird? It isn't that they fly, it isn't the beak, it isn't laying eggs....you'll have to read this great children's science book to find out the 1 thing that makes a bird a bird.

Listen to the Birds - a neat little book put out by Christian Light Press. It has black and white realistic drawings and tells the different calls of several birds.

This is the Sunflower by Lola M. Schaefer - this is another one like The House that Jack Built. This is about the sunflower that grows in the sun, that has lots of seeds, the birds come and get them, they scatter them...a neat picture book on how the seeds get scattered - by birds!

When Agnes Caws  by Candace Fleming - this is a story about a little girl, Agnes, who has the amazing talent of making sounds exactly like birds. This talent ends up helping her out of a very tricky situation later in the story!

The Bird House - by Cynthia Rylant (I had no idea C. Rylant had written so many books!!) This is a really sweet story about a little orphan girl who watches a lady that has lots of birds at her house (outdoors.) She loves watching all the birds...and eventually they are able to connect because of their love for the birds and then 2 lonely people aren't lonely anymore!

The Birdwatchers by SImon James -- this is a SWEET story, maybe one of my favorites for the week! It's about a little boy whose grandpa goes birdwatching and takes him on his first birdwatching day in this story. They see lots of neat things!

The Burgess Bird Book for Children by Thornton W. Burgess - - I have read about this book on the FIAR message boards, several moms have raved about it! It is a book of short stories, each on different birds. This will be our read-aloud for this week!

Fun Crafts & Activities

* http://www.dltk-kids.com/animals/mbaldeagle.htm  This is a toilet paper roll bald eagle! Since we did learn that the eagle is a symbol of our freedom here in America, I thought it would be neat to learn just a little bit more about the eagle this week. We will read a book from the library specifically about eagles on this day as well.

* Enchanted Learning has some good printables we are doing - I am not posting a link, because my member link comes up and then you can't open it! But you can go to enchanted learning, click on "animal printouts" and then find "birds" and you should be good to go! There are activity sheets as well as coloring pages for lots of different birds.

*The girls have LOVED drawing birds in their nature journals! So this week, I think we will find some new favorite birds out of these great books and try and draw them as well. Check out THIS post to find out more about the birdwatching corner in our playroom.

*We will hopefully be visiting an exotic bird store this week too! Thanks to grandma and Aunt Lissa for telling us about this! I think this will be a GREAT field trip!! Especially after my girls and I have been learning more and becoming more fascinated with birds in the past few months!

* http://www.birds.cornell.edu/schoolyard/T_Resouces/ColoringBook.pdf  Check out this GREAT link for realistic drawings of birds as coloring pages with questions about each bird underneath. I think this would make a great bird-watching coloring book. I haven't totally decided yet, but I may print off a few at a time for us to work on together.

* http://www.naturesongs.com/birds.html -- This site has bird call recordings on it! YEAH!! I have been looking around for a book that was recommended for listening to various birds, but couldln't really buy anything else...so God provided a freebie for me!!

* If you want to read the Burgess Bird book for children that I mentioned, here is a site where they have a link for each type of bird that goes with each chapter. http://www.geocities.com/homeschooling3boybarians/burgessbirdbook.html

*I also read on another site that you can paint a more realistic bird by getting a wooden bird at a craft store. So, this weekend when we are in Knoxville I may have to look for a few of those!