I learned today that there are three different kinds of bluebirds: Eastern, Western, and Mountain. You learn all kinds of fascinating facts when you're teaching small children. We had a lot of fun enjoying the pictures. These are really beautiful birds.As always, we did a bit of handwriting practice; as always, Jonathan complained about it; as always, he did a very nice job. Makes me laugh inside. :)
Then we got out the watercolors and painted a couple of lovely coloring pages. Did you know that the Eastern Bluebird is New York's state bird? Jonathan was very interested in the coloring differences of each type and gender of bluebird. He painted his to be an female Eastern bluebird.
We listened to the bluebird's calls and songs. And the best find of the morning: the Children's Bluebird Activity Book - a printable pdf book all about bluebirds! It is written at a 4th grade level, so I chose about 1/4 of the pages to print and read through with Jonathan. Then we hole punched everything and tied it together with blue ribbon, making a sweet little book.
Overall, this was a more time consuming preschool project than we usually tackle, but I think both boys enjoyed it!
2 comments:
You could take him to La Mirada Park to look at the real thing! There are often a few at Blessed Sacrament, too. They move around a bit more in the winter, so there are no guarantees, but there are hundreds of them locally. Western Bluebirds, that is... no Easterns here, and Mountains are rare.
I'm not sure if this will make you feel any better, but Emma griped about handwriting practice until THIS YEAR!! It seems like it takes forever for it to be a smooth and reasonably comfortable process for some kids. She's also finally getting a lot faster at it and it isn't so painstaking and laborious.
BTW, we've been using this site - http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/search to learn about birds this year and we've really been liking it. It has been a great help as we've been reading through the Burgess Book of Birds.
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