Sunday, December 15, 2019

Little Scientists: Birds

This STEAM-based program usually starts with a story (non-fiction or fiction with factual elements) before we break up into stations to practice our STEAM skills. This program is for 2-5 year olds and lasts about 30 minutes. Here's what we were up to this time:

Worm Hunt- This station was just finding different colors of pipe cleaners in shredded paper and sorting them by color, by the younger attendees thought it was the greatest activity ever.


Bird or Bat? We used some pictures to decide if certain characteristics (fur vs. feathers, for example) belonged to birds or bats. This station was mainly for the 3-5 year olds but they had a good time sorting.


Bird Feeders- our take home activity was watching for birds in your yard (counting how many are on the ground vs in the air, etc.) so we made bird feeders to attract feathered friends. We used sunflower seed butter instead of peanut butter to be safe.


Eat Like a Bird- This one was definitely geared for the older kids, but everybody had fun. I put out a variety of utensils (tongs, tweezers, a straw, a chopstick, etc.) and bowls of objects (large pompoms, small seeds, marshmallows, water) and kids tried piccking up each of the objects to guess what kinds of foods birds might eat. I hung up close-up pictures of the bird beaks/bills to give hints.


Finally, we used a microscope and magnifying glasses to examine bird feathers. I got a few at the poultry building of a county fair and my parents donated some molted feathers from their pet macaw. It was also fun just pulling apart the barbs and smoothing them back together.  

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