Birds!

We started studying birds in science by first talking about their basic needs for survival. They need food, water, space, and shelter. It was fun to look around our own Lower School campus to identify and record places that provided each of these for our resident birds.

After learning that birds have specialized beaks which allow them to pick up different types of food, we decided to try an experiment. Each of us was a "bird" with a different beak. (The beaks were: a clothespin, a toothpick, a pair of scissors, and a spoon.) We put 20 pieces of one type of food at a time on the floor and four of us tried to pick up the food with our beaks. The foods were marbles (representing snails), gummy worms (representing worms, of course!), raisins (representing grubs), and styrofoam packing peanuts (representing water bugs.) It was interesting to see which beaks picked up each type of food!

After the experiment, we drew graphs to show our results.


We wanted to attract some birds to watch, so we each made a bird feeder. We put some shortening with oatmeal on a pinecone and then rolled it in birdseed. Those birds are in for a real treat! And we will have a treat watching them come to our feeders!