Welcome to the 1st grade Bird Blog! Our hope is to document and share our learning with you as we study the world of Ornithology. Enjoy the pictures and posts and mark your calendar for our "Celebration of Learning" on May 30th where you will have a chance to hear more about and see much of our work.
We designed and engineered "Life List" books to record observations and data about birds that we encounter. The first graders took these books on vacation with them and did some wonderful writing and drawing!
Simulating beak adaptations - Seed eaters have strong beaks (like a small pair of pliers) that help them crack open their food
Another type of beak - a nectar sipping,
long (pipette-like) beak like a hummingbird's beak
An amazing opportunity - The first graders got a behind-the-scenes tour of Yale University's state-of the-art Ornithology Lab. The collection rivals that of the Smithsonian Museum and the facility was equally impressive!
A quetzal - so colorful and such a tail!
Skins collected by Yale researchers on a recent research trip to Central America
Guess which bird lays these eggs? Hint: the eggs are only as big as tic tacs!
For the answer, ask a 1st grader!
Pondering, observing and recording in the Peabody Museum's bird exhibit
An impromptu art lesson on observational drawing
Brainstorming what we know about birds
Thinking about adaptations - birds have many types of feet for many different purposes!
Many birds migrate but the red knot's migration is VERY interesting and impressive!
We are reading a book about the red knot's migration called Red Knot, A Shorebird's Incredible Journey. We have tracked the migration route on Google Earth and are keeping a journal about the journey from the red knot's perspective. Right now, our flock has travelled from Tierra del Fuego over the Amazon rainforest to the northeastern coast of Brazil where we are loading up on crabs and mussels to store up energy for a very long, non-stop flight to the Delaware Bay. We are using math strategies to keep track of the total miles covered during the migration. So far we have travelled 4,400 miles!
STEAM project work helps us learn more about the birds we are researching. We are making clay bird models and will soon be engineering and building "Da Vinci-style" wings.
What a great day we had for our bird watching outing to Hammonasset! Many thanks to Jerry at the Audubon shop in Madison for leading our field studies and sharing so much information with us. In this photo we are looking at a baby great horned owl.
More bird watching....
Sharing bird expertise and journal work with grandparents and special friends on
GPSF Day 2013
Measuring and comparing anatomy and structure of a bird wing...
Da Vinci would be impressed!!!
Planning the next engineering steps; organization is everything!
Egg dissection and poetry (?!)
Egg dissections - looking at structure and coloration of chicken eggs...
Oh, by the way, they are pretty delicious and nutritious too!
Cooperation and nest building - working on an "installation piece" nest inspired by several sculpture artists that we studied
Practicing with our carefully measured and built pan pan pipes for our Mozart's Magic Flute inspired music piece - We are ready for our Ornithology Celebration of Learning tomorrow! See you at 8:30 in the STEAM Lab!
