Thursday, May 17, 2012

Birds- Nests, Eggs, and Feathers

During our Easter egg hunt on Easter Sunday, my Dad found two Robin’s nests. Both had eggs. We saw that a cat had ridded the one nest of it’s parents, so we extracted it for up close study, and we kept an eye on the other nest hoping to be able to see baby birds in the near future.

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The kids watched daily as this little guy would come out of the tree, and guard the nest from the ground. We knew that the mother bird was in the tree because anytime I tried to see if the eggs had hatched she would try to attack me.

At one point I brought out the nest which had been extracted, and the kids got a close up look.

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The kids really enjoyed seeing the nest up close and discussing how the birds made the nest. We talked about the blue color of the eggs, and about what might be in the nest that was still in the trees. I had already seen that the eggs had hatched, so I took them out one at a time, lifted them up, and let them see.

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The day we saw inside the nest, it rained. The kids were so concerned about the baby birds getting wet. So I decided we would do a little experiment to show how the birds feathers remain dry. (oil) Each child had two feathers. They dipped one feather in the water and it was wet. they dipped the next feather in the oil before dipping it into the water. the water rolled off of the feather.

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We then a painting using feathers. Messy, but oh so fun!

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After this project, we did a little “F” is for feather craft for Sammy.

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