For the Birds!

With Nicholas in school on Wednesday mornings, we have not been able to attend the Parents As Teachers (PATs) get-togethers anymore and we miss it so much. So...I started my own educational playgroup that meets on Friday mornings. Today was our first get together. We met at the Grapevine Botanical Gardens and I led the class as we learned all about birds. We sat on a blanket on the lawn near the big water fountain in the front.




The weather was nice, especially under the shade trees. I gave each child a little bag and told them to not peek as they put their hand in the bag. They described what they felt and tried to guess what we were going to talk about today. The children were delighted to find little red cardinals with real feathers in their bags (from the floral department at our local craft store).



We compared the birds to people. People and birds both have eyes. Birds have feet like people but they don't use them as much as we do. Instead they have feathers and wings to help them fly. People and birds have mouths but a bird mouth has a beak on it which helps them break open seeds to eat. People and birds both sing. We talked some about how each species of bird has their own unique song and we all sang the song of a Chickadee. People and birds both have families but bird families live in nests in trees and we passed around a realistic-looking little nest with eggs in it (also purchased at a local craft store).

We talked about watching birds in our backyard and what we needed to attract birds - water, food, and trees. We talked about some things that can help us learn more about birds. I showed the children some library books on birdwatching including some geared specifically for kids and others that were field guides to help identify the birds in their backyard. Nicholas likes looking at our field guides so he was excited to help me present this part of the class.



Next we made our own bird feeders to take home by hanging ice cream cones on a pipe cleaner, smearing them with peanut butter, then rolling them in bird seed.


Of course, we couldn't let ice cream cones go just to the birds so next we got our own cones and made people feeders by covering them in peanut butter and rolling them in a mixture of granola, raisins, and rice krispies. Yummy!



Once our tummies were full we walked around the rest of the gardens together enjoyting the bird songs, flowers, and ponds.





We looked at a map to see where we were.


We saw some beautiful koi fish...


...and a cool looking dragonfly.



A nice lady let us pet her sweet little dog.



We finished up the day with lunch at Willhoite's restaurant in Grapevine. They have an awesome buffet that's free for children under 5 years old.


And of course, we must have ice cream!