Ogden Nature Center Field Trip

We went to the Nature Center to attend a talk about Owls. It was interesting and good, but mostly it was just nice to be outside in the warm October weather.

Ezekiel CANNOT GET ENOUGH of Abe! How does he keep his neck like that for long periods of time? It hurts my neck just to look at it. But he's always craning around to see things. I try to straighten out his head and he pops it right back into its unnatural position so he can keep looking at what he wants to look at.

Birds of Prey Homeschool Unit Schedule and Lesson Plan

(click to enlarge)

After taking some time off when baby Ezekiel was born, our first unit back was Birds of Prey. We had a Bird Unit several years ago (Malachi loves birds) but this was a little more specialized. I mostly wanted the children to dissect owl pellets, which is something I did when I was younger and thought it was SO cool. And they loved it!

We got our owl pellet kits here. The tiny skeletons you find inside are so cool! Some of the children were more patient than others with their tweezers, but all of them were able to find and identify lots of little bones.

More useful links:

There are lots of activity ideas here in our previous Bird Unit

We listened to some of our favorite bird call videos, like this one, of a lyrebird imitating construction noises

We made cute little clay owls from air-dry clay

Here is a worksheet about types of nests

And here are a few pictures from our field trip to the aviary on a lovely (hot!) Fall day. Even baby Ezekiel enjoyed it!

Flamingos

Barn Owl--our favorite!

Daisy got her tiny penguin finger puppet at this aviary when she was just a wee tot! It is the thing that started her love of penguins, I think.

Junie, Daisy, Goldie. (Oh, how fast the time goes. It seems like yesterday my three little boys were standing by this sign!)