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Outside Our Window

For the last two weeks, this has been the view right outside our dining room window.

robin nest 

The momma bird gets a little skittish when we come outside {our van is right near the tree} ~ and really, with Zachary around, who can blame her?

Last night I was able to sneak over to the nest when she was off getting some food for herself and hold my camera up over the nest and get a little peek inside…

robin eggs

I do believe this mom of four is a little partial to this momma robin! :) We’ve pulled out our robin lapbooks from last year and are taking a little refresher course this spring. Hopefully we’ll be seeing some little beaks in the next week!

Preschool Corner: Robin Lapbook

We had a little robin who decided to build a nest right in front of our house and we were able to watch the entire process. The kids were thrilled to discover that she had laid three eggs.

Zachary was the one who alerted us to the fact there were eggs in the nest ~ after he reached up, stuck his hand in the next one morning and felt the eggs.

We had a little discussion about leaving bird’s nests alone. Yes, we did.

That seemed like a great time to avoid those last few pesky letters of the alphabet that are hanging over my head and use the time to learn as much as we could about robins. It would be a shame to waste a perfectly good learning opportunity, don’t you think?

Drawing a picture of a robin

I posted about the robin lapbooks that the girls put together along with some great links, but wanted to do a separate post for Zachary’s lapbook, since it was a little different and more ‘directed’ by him. He was so excited to have school time along with the girls and feels like he is really doing school right now. It’s so funny to watch him.

Zachary’s lapbook only used one file folder ~ I opened it flat and then re-folded it so that there were two smaller flaps on the sides. The above picture shows the front and the back of his lapbook {cover pic is linked below} For the back cover, Zachary drew a picture of some worms and dictated a few sentences to me:

“Robins can see the ground moving. That means worms are going underground. They eat them.”

There are only a few minit books inside: Who’s Who {difference between male and female birds}, bird food, predators, a coloring sheet with a robin’s anatomy, clip art and a drawing Zachary made of a robin’s nest. I didn’t get a very good picture of his completed drawing, but it’s hysterical! The robins all have their heads straight up, mouths open and waiting for food. He was so proud because he did it all by himself and wrote “This iz a robin” along the top.

Here are a some shots inside the lapbook and with the minit books fully opened:

During the week we also worked on memorizing a little poem about “Little Robin Redbreast”. Zachary did great memorizing the first stanza of it:

Little Robin Redbreast

Little Robin Redbreast sat upon a tree,
Up went pussy cat and down went he;
Down came pussy, and away Robin ran;
Says little Robin Redbreast, “Catch me if you can.”

Little Robin Redbreast jumped upon a wall,
Pussy cat jumped after him and almost got a fall;
Little Robin chirped and sang, and what did pussy say?
Pussy cat said, “Meeow!” and Robin jumped away.


Links for the Lapbook
:

Be sure to check out my post about the girl’s robin lapbooks. I’m covering a lot more information about the things that we talked about during the week and will have more resources and links in that post!

About the Preschool Corner:

The Preschool Corner is a place for us to share the ideas we are using during our “preschool time” with our kids. You can join in the fun and record what you are doing in your house. Please link your exact blog post to the Mr. Linky below (if you have questions feel free to ask). Be sure to link back to this blog post so that your readers can find some other great ideas too!

The guidelines can be found here if you need them.

Share what you’ve been doing in your house this week!

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Robin Lapbook and Unit Study

Little did I know that one simple robin’s nest would take us on an adventure into learning some fun things about robins ~ and more about the creativity of God!

We watched a mommy robin build her nest right outside our window, found out {thanks to Zachary putting his hand in the nest} that she had laid three eggs…and then watched and waited patiently.

Until she abandoned the nest three days before the eggs were supposed to hatch.

Regardless, we continued on with our robin study and learned so much. We’ve all been sharing the little tidbits that we’ve learned with others we know, because it’s too neat NOT to share!

At the end of the post I’ll include a full list of all the great links and resources we used over the last bit. I’ll also throw in some of the fun facts we learned as I post pictures of the lapbooks the girls put together. Tomorrow I’ll be posting the lapbook we did for Zachary as part of the Preschool Corner.

Every day we spent time memorizing “Little Robin Redbreast” and also sitting outside to observe the robins {and other birds} in our yard ~ their songs, habits, etc… We also worked on the minit books that went along with what we were studying that day.

Monday: A Robin’s Habitat ~ Our backyard

  • Identifying robins: difference between males and females ~ minit book
  • Scientific name of robins: turdus migratorius
  • Migration of robins & minit book
  • What do robins eat?
  • How do robins find their food? We had so much fun watching the robins in our yard and learning that they actually see the ground move ~ not hear like we originally thought!

Tuesday: Life Cycles/Nesting ~ Getting ready for babies

  • What are the predators of robins?
  • Who builds the nest?
  • Robins ‘chore chart‘ ~ who has what responsibilities in raising babies. You guessed it, it’s primarily the momma robin. We learned that the mom lays one egg a day and that it generally takes 2 weeks for the eggs to hatch. The mother robin spends on average about 50 minutes of each hour sitting on the eggs in the nest.

Wednesday: Keeping up with the babies

  • Feeding habits of babies ~ wow! We were amazed to learn that the parents have about 100 feedings a day. {And I thought that my kids ate a lot}
  • In the first two weeks of life, each baby eats the equivalent of 14 feet of worms ~ we even went into the backyard and measured that out.
  • Babies weigh less than a quarter when they are born and are almost the same size as their parent within 2 weeks.
  • Disposable diapers for birds ~ This was amazing!! Did you know that every time a baby robin eats it poops right away? That way the parents are there to pick up after them. Their poop is contained in a little sac that the parents can pick up {just like a disposable diaper} and carry away from the nest. This helps keep the nest clean.

Thursday: Listening to robin’s songs

  • What are the different songs of robins ~ we sat outside and listened to them
  • Put our lapbook and minit books together
  • Wrote/journaled and illustrated our robin stories. The girls used Draw Write Now to do the first page and then drew their own pictures on the second page. We use a lined journal that has room for drawing on the top of the page and then I photocopy their work to put in the lapbook.

Books we used

Free Bird Nature Study Printables!!

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If you are looking for some additional notebooking style pages, don’t miss the free Bird Nature Study Printables. It includes bird tracking, information pages, labeling activities and much more! 


Some Great Resources

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