Science Sunday - Bird Beaks for Insect Catching

Our Science Sunday activity, this week, came straight out of Janice Vancleave's Play and Find Out About Nature.

To find how beaks help birds (certain birds, at least) to catch insects, we turned letter sized envelopes into paper beaks, for catching pom-pom insects.

First, we cut the flaps off of the envelopes.

Then, we folded the envelopes in half, small ends together, and unfolded them.

The children placed their hands into the envelopes, with their thumbs in one corner, and fingers in the other...

...and we pushed the envelope in, at the fold line, to form a beak...

...which we secured to the children's hands with a rubber band.

They took turns tossing, and catching their insects - a task which proved harder than it looked.

We learned, that hunting insects takes a good eye, a lot of energy, and a properly shaped beak, and that catching pom-poms in an enveloped hand is a lot of fun.

For even more fun with science for children, check out this week's Science Sunday link-up, at Adventures in Mommydom.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Homemade Hummingbird Feeder

It's a little early for hummingbirds to start showing up in our neck of the woods, but we thought it might not be a bad idea to be ready with a feeder, for their arrival.

Commercially made hummingbird feeders aren't overly expensive, so I imagine we'll pick one up, once we get a chance, but in the meantime, we have a homemade model standing by.

It was easy enough to make. We followed direction from this YouTube video (click the link to go to the video), that called for an empty soda bottle, an empty plastic tub, with a snap on lid, and scissors, nails, hole punches, and such for making holes in the lids. We also added a plastic tie wrap, and twine for hanging.

First, we traced the bottle cap on our plastic tub lid...

...and cut out a hole...

...big enough to slip over the neck of the bottle.

We used the hole punch to add four, small feeding holes to the lid.

And, we punched a hole in the bottle cap, with a hammer, and nail (over a cutting board).

Finally, we secured the tie clip, near the bottom of the pop bottle (we used a Coke Zero bottle, that had a good shape for hooking the tie clip around), and tied our twine to it.

Then, all that was left was to fill the bottle with a solution of 4 parts water (boiled and cooled), to one part sugar, and place on our tub lid...

...screw on the pop bottle cap...

...snap on the tub...

...and flip the whole thing over, ready to hang...

...and we are good to go, in case an early bird arrives, before we make it to the store for a more official (and Man of the House accepted) feeder.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Hummingbird Craft and Books

We read Keith Baker's simple, but fun Little Green, today.

It's probably more suited to the toddler, than preschool crowd, but C enjoyed the short, collage illustrated story, of a little boy following the darting path of a hummingbird outside his window, and reproducing its path on paper, with bright, sweeping strokes of paint.

C was inspired to reproduce the hummingbird's path on her Magna-Doodle.

I was reminded of a pom-pom craft I'd seen at Ramblings of a Crazy Woman, that was a perfect go along. I let the younger children each pick a couple of 1 inch pom-poms, to glue together (smaller than the original craft called for, but we used up all our jumbo pom-poms for our nesting birds). And, I broke toothpicks in half...

...for them to color black...

...and glue, as a beak into the front of their birds' heads.

Then, they glued on eyes...

...and cut mini-muffin cups in half, and half again, to make quarters, for the wings, then cutting one of the left over quarters in half again, to make an eighth for the tail. Don't you love crafts, that incorporate math?

After our craft, we made a quick trip to the library, and picked up a few additional books:

Noriko and Don Carroll's beautifully photographed First Flight, A Mother Hummingbird's Story...

...which we discovered has been made into a movie, we're now anxious to see. Click here, to view the trailer.

We also picked up the Stokes Hummingbird Book, so we can learn how to attract hummingbirds to our own yard, once they start arriving in force, this summer.

While we were at the library, I picked up a couple of holds, that had arrived in, as well:

Birds In Their Homes by Addison Webb - an artfully illustrated (by Sabra Mallett Kimball), look at the nests, and nesting habits of fifty-four birds of the "city, country, and garden", making it a perfect follow-up book to our nest spotting drive, from last weekend.

And, an audio version of Mark Obmascik's The Big Year, a Tale of Man, Nature, and Fowl Obsession, which I had hoped we could listen to as a family, but after previewing the first few chapters, realized there is a bit too much "adult" language, for the children's ears. But, I think the humorous account of the continent wide, year long, contest for serious birders, ought to prove interesting for the Man of the House, and I.

For more book reviews, and recommendations for children, be sure to check out this week's "What My Child is Reading" link-up, over at Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Free Scripture Memory Song Downloads

I know not everyone has the same taste in music, but on the off chance you share mine, let me encourage you to check out Mark Altrogge's Hide The Word series of CDs. This is the intro to the series from Forever Grateful Music, with which I totally agree:

Hide the Word combines the power of music with the power of repetition to make memorizing God's Word easy. Each Scripture, including its reference, is made into a song. Each Scripture is repeated at least 3 times per song. As you play the music while driving, doing dishes, or any other time throughout your day, you will find yourself quickly picking up the verses and recalling them from memory.

And, here is a link to a page where you can listen to, and download nine or ten of the songs for free, to listen to, enjoy, and memorize.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Seed Paper Flowers

We received Kathryn O. Galbraith's Planting the Wild Garden, from the folks at Blue Slip Media, in exchange for an honest review, and found the picture book, marked for ages 4-8, thoroughly delightful.

It is a non-fiction story, but wistfully sweet, with beautifully detailed illustrations. The author presents the world as one, large garden, with all of us - the wind, the birds, the animals, the steams, and people, working together to spread the seeds, that plant it.

After reading Galbraith's story, we were inspired to spread some seeds, ourselves. But, of course, it's too early for planting here, yet.

So we did the next best thing, with an idea from How Does She?, and made seed paper flowers, to use later in the spring, when it finally decides to warm up. I gave the girls, construction paper circles, with a spiral design penciled onto one side.

They painted the blank side of the circles with a flour/water paste, made from one cup of flour, and 1 1/4 cups of water.

Then, they sprinkled the painted circles with flower seeds (maybe a few too many flower seeds).

While they were still damp, or about halfway dried, I cut the spirals...

...and rolled them from the outside in...

...tucking the last bit into the center, to hold the blossoms together, without tape or glue, and leaving a small hole...

...to slip a pipe cleaner stem through. In fact, wouldn't that look pretty attached to the front of a Mother's Day, or Easter, or May Day card?

My intention was to stand them, as a centerpiece, in a vase. But, the heads proved too heavy for pipe cleaner stems. They used some kind of heavier wire stems, at How Does She?, which worked well. We found the blossoms are quite lovely just sitting on a glass plate though, so I think we'll stick with that.

To plant, they just need to be unrolled, placed in the flower garden, sprinkled with dirt, and watered. Then, real flowers will grow, as the paper flowers disintegrate into the dirt.

For more story themed arts, and crafts for children, click over to this week's stART (story+ART) link-up, at A Mommy's Adventures.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

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Digital Flashcard Screensaver - Thinking "Inside" The Box

It dawned on me, while I was busy helping the children cut, and paste all those bird pictures onto note cards yesterday, that the pictures could also be used as flashcards on the computer.

All I needed to do was bring up each picture in our computer's paint program, and add a label, with the name of the bird, across the bottom.

Actually, I went ahead and copied an entire new set of pictures, for the children's computer (the one they use for homework, and games), this time mainly copying from All About Birds, The CornellLab of Ornithology site, so we would have the same birds, but different pictures or poses, than those on our paper flashcards.

I saved them all into a single photo file, and set that file as the computer's screen saver.

The computer is in D's room, because he has little interest in playing on it, so I don't have to constantly be checking in on it (and him) during nap time, and because it's an easy room to monitor from the living room, when the rest of the children are up, and using it. Now, instead of having it sit dark, and idle, while D (age 8) plays with Legos, or other toys, during the afternoon quiet time, it can be silently flashing through the birds from our area we're learning to identify.

D loves it. And, I'm already thinking about future uses for the screensaver, like flashcards of sharks of world, local flowers, foreign language vocabulary, pictures of sign language symbols...there are so many possibilities.

It's great to be a homeschooler.