Olivia's Blog: Preschool Week 1- Birds

I doubt that my attempts at a weekly update will all be this detailed, so don't get used to this. I'm also only writing about the science stuff since right now it's the only subject that we structure.

DAY 1
On Tuesday (9/7/10) we officially started preschool. Monday was a holiday and because Niki had the day off work, I forgot it was Monday so we just decided to start on Tuesday. Our science topic for the week was birds and so day 1 focused on just learning some basics.

After a good breakfast and other morning things we headed out to the library to check out some books about birds. I showed Olivia how to look up our subject with the library catalog. This is sort of how it went.

Olivia, there's the computer. We are going to find out where all the books about birds are. Have a seat right next to me. Stop hitting buttons please. Okay, now we type in our subject. Do you want to type it in? Olivia, stop hitting buttons. Do you need to get down or do you want to help type? Okay. Type a B. No, not D, a B. I'm sorry for not enunciating. I-R-D-S. Now click this square. See all the numbers? These numbers tell us where the books are. Let's write them down so we can find the books on the shelves. Olivia, if you slam that keyboard one more time we're going home. Okay, let's go find the books that have these matching numbers.

Not to worry, week two at the library went very smoothly.

After we cruised the children's nonfiction section for bird books we headed to the fiction section and by the time we made it to check out we had everything from National Geographic to The Little Red Hen plus a few extras, mostly truck related. We sacked out on a beanbag for awhile to do some reading, then we headed to Niki's work to say hi (library is down the street from the office), and then straight to Michael's to pick up some feathers for bird crafts.

Art Projects for the day

Colored a picture of a bird and together we labeled the parts.

Covered an outline of a bird with feathers

DAY 2
For days 2 and 3 I wanted to focus on what birds eat. Today we covered the omnivorous birds, IE the seed, plant, and bug eating ones. After breakfast we made some pine cone bird feeders and then in the afternoon we headed out to a waterfowl preserve area (may not actually be a preserve) and observed some geese and ducks. We were pretty lucky and got to see quite a few birds eating what they were supposed to be eating. Olivia seemed particularly impressed that all the birds liked exactly what the books said they would.

Olivia pretending to eat the seeds

Within ten minutes of hanging these up in our tree a squirrel came by and wrapped himself around the pinecone and licked as fast as he could. Some scrub jays and a mocking bird did end up coming by later in the day.

As we were leaving the house to go see the water birds Olivia decided that she couldn't leave without her backpack. I didn't know that she even had one but out of closet came this little carrier for stuffed animals and so along it came. We filled it with a water bottle, some snacks and a change of clothes.

At the sanctuary

Checking out the geese and ducks

DAY 3
This was our carnivore day. I made sure that we made it to the Raptor Center around feeding time so Olivia could see what everyone was having for breakfast. She was totally unfazed by the rats, baby chicks and dead mice everywhere.

Arriving at the raptor center

Checking out Mickey, a very noisy red shouldered hawk. He was having mice for breakfast and Olivia just so you know, Olivia has her chin on the bar, not her mouth. Of course now that I think about it, her chin on the bar is kind of gross too.

The Raptor center has a nature center.

Taking apart an owl pellet. Olivia was really fascinated by the idea of owls spitting out the mouse bones

There was a table set up with a magnifying glass but Olivia found a dead fly and thought it was way more interesting than anything they had set up.

Art projects of the day

We did a review of what birds eat with two sticker chart type things. Along the top are the types of birds and along the bottom are all the different things they eat.

Later in the afternoon Olivia dug out the feathers and wanted to do something with them and so we made some quick puppets that she "flew" all around the house.

DAY 4

Nest day. We headed to the Avian Sciences Department to check out displays. On each floor of the building there are about 2 or 3 glass case displays set up and so we cruised around looking at everything from bird skeletons to thankfully, nests and eggs.

Checking out a nest and egg display. Olivia really liked the hummingbird nest.

Gathering materials for building a nest.

So my first thought was to use what Olivia had gathered and the two of us would craft a nest. Totally didn't work. I have no idea how birds do it. So after a couple minutes and failing miserably we went to the garage to find some wire. I made a basic frame but still failed miserably. Once I started getting frustrated and Olivia started loosing patience, I simplified things for us. We got out Olivia's favorite school supply- glue. The top nest is one she made to model a larger bird's nest and it has sticks and leaves glued to a semi circle I cut out of some thin cardboard. The bottom nest she glued leaves and grass to an egg cup from a cardboard egg carton. She wanted it to look like a hummingbird's nest. Great job if I might add. That other one is my attempt at making the wire frame work. It sort of worked but I don't reccommend it for a project.

Now, if we had started the week on a Monday instead of Tuesday, I would have made our Friday egg day but I decided to just drop it out of this unit completely. I figured that we could tie eggs into spring around Easter. But, we still went on our egg field trip anyway. So, Saturday morning we headed over to Olga and Chris' house to see their chickens.

Olivia was really excited about her new eggs and we made scrambled eggs as soon as we got home and pretty much everyday after that until we finished the dozen. Niki was totally grossed out by the eggs, especially since we almost got to see one of the chickens lay one while we were there.

What I learned