Need a quick & easy activity to add to your bird lesson? Want to add some bird-watching imaginative play to your day? Try out this activity. Partly a craft, partly learning fun, & partly a scavenger hunt – you’re kiddos are sure to learn a bit while having fun! Read on to check it out!
THE IMAGINATIVE PLAY – BIRD WATCHING DAY!
THE BIRD PRINTOUTS
The idea is fairly simple – pick a few birds you’d like to highlight or ‘find’ in this expedition. For our bird watching activity, we picked a Robin, BlueJay, American Goldfinch, and Turkey, but you can easily add your own with some images and a few facts! To make them a bit more engaging, we made the images look like the birds were describing their own facts vs. just listing the text next to the image of the bird. Then we “hide” the birds all around the area.
If you’ve got the time and space, for an added bonus, create some DIY Upcycled Wall Tree Crafts to “hide” some of the birds in a more “natural” setting 😉 We used the images on the left as we “hid” our birds in the Wall Trees.
THE BINOCULARS
If you’ve got some toy binoculars hanging out around, great! Bring them out for some imaginative play! If not OR you’d like to keep the kiddos a little busier with some added build-up to the main event, have them create their own binoculars! With just a few supplies you probably already have at home, you can easily create some upcycled binoculars – click here for our step by step guide. Note: if you’re painting or using regular glue, you may want to factor in the drying time.
THE BIRD BOOKLETS
A bird watching expedition isn’t complete without a bird watching journal! If you’re focused on a few facts, you can write out or sketch out what facts you’d like the kids to find (these will be visible on the bird watching cards – these are the same facts that appear in the birds’ speech bubbles on the hidden cards). We referenced the National Geographic Pocket Guide – Birds of North America Book as well as wikipedia for the facts. For our bird activity, we highlighted: where the bird is found, what they eat, and a few other facts but you can definitely tailor to any particular lesson you’re teaching.
THE BIG FINALE – THE BIRD WATCHING EXPEDITION
Once the kiddos are equipped with their bird booklets and their binoculars, send them off on a journey to find as many birds as they can! Ask them to write down any information and fun facts they can find for each bird!
If you want to add to the learning fun, you can also have them categorize or count & chart out the different birds 🙂
OTHER FUN BIRD ACTIVITIES
CRAFTING BIRDHOUSES
What kid doesn’t love painting? Let their creativity soar with designing and crafting some birdhouses. Small wooden houses can be relatively inexpensive ($1 or less if you buy in bulk). Then you just need some regular kid’s paint and you’re all set 🙂 If you want them to get really creative, you can have a few sticks or other embellishments for them to glue on if they want to 🙂
BUILDING NATURAL BIRD NESTS
With a bit of sticks, stones, and maybe a bit of mud (if you want to get that messy 🙂 ), you can construct a bird nest – or at least something that resembles one!
THANK YOU!
Thank you so much for checking out our bird activities article. Hopefully it gave you some great ideas for your next activity!
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Happy Bird Watching! 🙂
