Story–Who’s Been Here?

I found this library book that worked wonderfully
with our focus on animal tracks.

I brought the book to life by printing animal track images
and finding stuffies that matched the story.

I told this story a couple of times and was very pleased how
the children became involved guessing who had made the track.

Here’s my version, enjoy.

Animal Tracks

    
This week’s outside adventure was to the beach to search
for animal tracks.
 
There were several activities set up, the first was in their I Spy Nature Bag.
Find these birds; eagle and a seagull.
The children had an opportunity to use binoculars although it was easy
to spot lots of seagulls.
 
We finally spotted an eagle, it flew around above us before landing
on a telephone pole.
We have a lot of eagle’s here and it’s always impressive to see them.
 
There were lots of ducks on the water and as we were leaving we
saw Canada geese too.

A second activity was making tracks in the sand.
     
We did see tracks when we arrived, mainly from dogs,
but as we walked around we covered them with our boot tracks.
So we used these purchased plastic moulds.
 
By pressing the mould into the damp sand it left a print.
 
We mixed plaster of paris and poured it on the print.   We’ve done
this activity before but in the warmth of June and it dried pretty fast.
Not today.  It took almost the whole hour to dry enough to lift
without breaking.  We’ll do it again in the classroom later this week.

Another activity we did was inspired by Teach Preschool.
        
 
They picked the track they wanted and went in search of rocks, sticks,
shells, grass to recreate it.
 
Filling the bottom of the box with glue they were able to stick their
natural items on top.
       
 

Lastly we enjoyed a snack and story.
 
Mmm, hot chocolate, marshmallows and birdseed cookies were
perfect on this cool day at the beach.
 
I discovered this book about birds that led to a painting activity.
In the beginning they were all the same shape and colour – white.
So Mother Nature sent helpers to paint them.
 
 
After seeing the pictures of the variety of birds in the book they
painted their own bird.
  

A fun morning learning out of doors.
 

Being Birds

    
A few days ago I was chatting with another StrongStart
facilitator about our focus on birds and she lent me
the above grapevine wreathes. 
She used them at her centre and a child immediately
sat down and said “I’m a bird”.
    
That’s what happened at our centre too. 
The girl in the above pictures was the first to try the nest. 
When asked what kind of bird she is, she responded
“a robber bird that likes shiny things”.
 
The next day I brought in feather boas and we talked about
how birds use them to make the inside of the nest soft and
comfortable.
 
The feathers were the invitation that many of the children
needed to play as birds.

 
              They flew in and out of the nest.
 
            There were baby birds and mama birds.
 
I tried the nest too and was busy flapping my wings when this little guy
gave me a look that said “you gotta be kidding, Maureen”. 
But it didn’t take much persuasion for him to join me.
     
We are busy tweeting like birds in a nest when his dad flies over
    
with a worm to feed the baby.  Love when the grown ups
get involved in the play, it reinforces the positive learning
and that it's fun and okay to be silly. 

Often during the day I asked the question 
“If you were a bird what kind would you be?” 
We had eagles, crows, gulls, herons and more.

Now I put that same question to you –
"If you could be a bird, what kind of bird would you be?

Bird Study

    
There are quite a variety of birds that live on our Island.
If you took the time to notice you would see birds everyday.
Just outside our windows are chickadees, robins, starlings and
further down the road toward the water are gulls, hawks and eagles.
And Trumpeter Swans winter here, in the Valley, on the farmers
fields.
 
So it was a natural choice to study birds.
We started last week with a few art activities and a visit to the bird
sanctuary at the marsh. 
 
This week I encouraged the children to tell me what they know about birds
and what they wonder.  I soon realized the children are not often asked to
express their knowledge in this way and it took some time talking about
birds first to encourage them.
 
We wrote their thoughts on bird shaped paper and hung it on our
learning tree.
 
Once we had a few samples on the tree it became easier for
the children to think of more. 
 
I started to notice that most of their knowledge was about
what birds ate and where they lived.

      So this morning I changed the way we recorded what we know.
 
               He is drawing a tree with a nest on the top.
        
          Another child’s thoughts about the food they eat.
           We will continue this for a few more days.

In the next day or two I’ll add a few posts of other activities we’ve done
to support their knowledge.