Outdoor Hour Challenge Birds #1

Outdoor Hour Challenge Birds #1

House Finch & Robin

We studied the House Finch a couple weeks ago as part of the Winter Wednesday challenges, so we just did a quick review of this bird. Here is my post about it.

Today we learned about the Robin. I had pre-read The Handbook of Nature Study pages about the Robin (pg. 57-62) and highlighted those things that I wanted to share with my kids. At our lesson time I used the pictures at Cornell's AllAboutBirds Robin page to help illustrate what we were reading about. I clicked on all the pictures and arranged them so they were bigger and all visible at the same time. We were able to see how the male and female are different, how the juvenile is different from the adult, how the nest and eggs look, as I read this information aloud, which really helped my kids (age 7 & 6) understand what I was reading.

The kids also greatly enjoyed listening, and singing along with, the Robin's bird calls. We listened to all those listed by Barb at the Handbook of Nature Study blog (Thank you Barb for all your hard work!!). Here are the links: Robin Calls #1- Learn Bird Songs, #2- All About Birds, #3- What Bird.

Then I read from The Burgess Bird Book about Welcome Robin (pg.21-26), my kids found Jennie Wren's criticism of Welcome Robins dirty nest funny, and they liked learning about how Robin's can hear worms!! If you don't have the Burgess Bird book you can find the text online at The Baldwin Project (with illustrations) and an audio recording at Librivox.

The kids used the Cornell coloring pages. Nyah started one , but soon stopped and said she didn't mean to color a male Robin, and could I please print another page for her so she could color a female Robin.

Nyah's first one- Male

Nyah's second one- FemaleAustin's- Male

After they finished coloring the pictures and instead of answering the questions on the page, I had them tell me what they remembered about Robins, and I wrote it below their pictures. One thing they were excited to discover from flipping through their geography state coloring books is that the Robin is the state bird for Connecticut, New York, & Wisconsin.

A picture from a recent visit to the Hutchings Museum. Austin wondered why there were 5 eggs in this display when a Robin usually lays 4 at a time. we haven't seen any Robins around here yet, and with it snowing today it may be a while before they decide to visit our city.