Paper Mache Birds

As we finished up our bird study, the extended day children finished their paper mache birds. This project took several days. Here is what we did: First roll up newspaper into a ball.

Form into a body, use masking tape.

Cut out strips of paper towel (great for cutting practice) and dip into the paper mache. Apply to the bird body. TIP= dry on waxed paper so it does not stick!
A few days later (or once dry)...

Make wings out of cardstock or cardboard and paper mache these to the body.

Let dry again. Then paint the bodies!

We made legs out of wire and then wrapped in embroidery yarn.

Voila! The birds are finished. The children loved their projects!!

China

As the Chinese New Year began on Monday, we decided to begin our Asian studies with the country of China. We have had many interesting activities.

We have colored Chinese New Year cards!

We have introduced a practical life transferring activity with Chinese bowls and a spoon.

Although we usually have individual snacks (not everyone is hungry at the same time!) we had a second, special group snack of sticky rice with chopsticks! The children loved using the chopsticks and seemed to enjoy the sticky rice!

We made Chinese lanterns which required coloring, cutting on the line, taping or gluing.

We created and colored the Chinese flag.

And the map of China.

We have also painted at the easel with a Chinese paint brush and tomorrow will be creating a dragon out of egg cartons as it is the Year of the Dragon!

Asia

We have moved on from Antarctica and have now begun the study of Asia. The children were excited to see the new puzzle map in our puzzle rack. There are MANY pieces in Asia so this requires a puzzle control chart to help keep track of the different countries.

The children are also coloring Asia on a map, looking at pictures of animals in Asia and different places. We will be specifically studying the countries of China, India and Japan in the upcoming weeks!

A Visit to the Nature Center

As an extension to our bird study, we decided to take a trip to the Nature Center to see the other birds of prey. Although it was chilly we walked around the outdoor enclosures and the wonderful guides at Leslie Science and Nature Center introduced us to the birds. We met many different owls such as the Great Horned Owls.

We saw a falcon, a kestral, turkey vultures, different owls but the bird that stole the show was the Eagle! She was very entertaining and wanted us to come back and see her even when we were looking at the other birds. She was voted the favorite!

When we returned to school one of the children wanted to write the names of the birds with the moveable alphabet.

An OWL visit!!

As we are studying birds in our current vertebrate study, we decided to try to find a real bird. This gives the children a concrete experience with the animal and is so much richer than looking at a picture. We had Leslie Science and Nature Center bring an owl to the classroom today. This owl was a female Eastern Screech Owl. She has a broken wing and is being cared for at the center.

Sara, our guide led us through many features of owls and the children had many questions. Here are some things we learned...
Owls have big eyes, if they had a head our size, the eyes would be as big as tennis balls.
They are brown because they want to blend into their environment, this is called camouflage.
They cannot move their eyes, instead they move their head. Luckily, she turned her head backwards at that moment!

The little tufts that look like ears are not actually ears. Instead the dark line that runs around the side of their face is where their ears are.

The wings of an owl make no sound. This is so the critters they are hunting cannot hear them. To demonstrate this idea, our guide had us close our eyes as she waved an owl wing then one single turkey feather. The owl wing made no noise. The turkey feather did! She then passed these around so the children could feel them. The owl wing was very light and soft. Luckily, we just gave a lesson on how to hold something fragile. The children were very careful.

Owls don't usually build nests. They find a hole in a tree or somewhere safe with a lot of food available.
This type of owl lays up to five eggs at a time, they are very small and are off white with brownish spots.

Yesterday afternoon we read "Owls" by Gail Gibbons to the afternoon children. They had a few questions and many comments about owls!
This was a wonderful experience for all of us. We learned so much and the owl was very cute!

Nest Building

No, we are not birds but we are studying them! (Please see earlier post about our third veretbrate- birds) After discussing how some birds build nests, we decided to try building some of our own. The afternooners or extended day children decided to build big ones for eggs we would be making. First we went outside and collected natural items that birds could use in a nest.

We then headed inside with baskets full of sticks, pine needles etc. We added paper, yarn and other items. Using a paper bowl wrapped in a plastic bag, we layered watered down glue, sticks, paper and the other items over and over.

For the morning children, we used smaller bowls wrapped in a sandwich bag and shredded paper.

After we built our nests, we left them to dry.

Today, we sent home the big and smaller nests. The children placed eggs we made and painted inside their nests.

This was a project that took several days and some drying time. It is pretty easy to build a nest. Just make sure to use watered down glue and some plastic bags so the glue will not stick. This experience gave the children a hands on experience of nests, they really seemed to enjoy the process.

Reading - matching pictures to words

Now that this child has built words with the Moveable Alphabet by sounding out various c-v-c objects (pan, bug, box etc...) she is able to read words and match them to the photos. This is slightly more abstract as she is now given pictures (instead of concrete objects) and words (instead of the individual letters). We will continue this way through various words and then will introduce the basic sight words. She will then begin reading phrases containing c-v-c words.