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Gathering our feet together to walk through the green field on birding adventures has been immensely enjoyable. We engage our senses and imagination with a fun scavenger hunt geared toward birds. One way to do this is to have us collect a list of bird observations.  Some of us choose to associate ourselves with the birds of our interests - blue jay (Margo), eagles (Lukah and Felix), crows (Brooks), cardinal (Nora). and owls (Fides). As bird watchers we learn about the many ways birds characteristics, including movements, sounds, colors, and calls. Margo exhibits how a baby blue jay tries to jump a little before she can fly. Lukah identifies the movement of an eagle swooping his wide wings. Brooks chooses to resemble a baby crow bird with a short pair of wings flapping and making the cawing sound. Our birds nature journaling is a hands-on invitation to document and sketch what we observe. In our bird journals, we further explicitly draw drawings of birds of our interests and share pertinent stories about them. By drawing our birds onto visible representations, we develop ways to articulate our descriptive abilities.   Bird-watching requires paying attention to the smells, sights, and sounds of nature, including each bird's markings and sounds and how they behave. It is an opportunity to improve our focus and our sensory processing abilities. Nora attempts to make a bird call by making an invitation birdie, where are you? As we know each bird has its own call, even if they all sound like tweet tweet to novice birders. By teaching ourselves to listen to each unique song, we will learn to sharpen our hearing. The more in tune we are toward the birds around us, the more opportunities for us to spot them on. As some say, practice makes perfect! Getting our bodies out in the backyard, and crossing over an obstacle, or standing quietly watching the robin birds walking on the grass means we are moving and experiencing nature.  Backyard bird-watching can be a wonderful lifelong hobby that allows us to build patience, concentration, powers of observation and develop a connections to natural world. Emily, with her mindfulness, captures the moment of being still to observe the robin birds enjoying themselves bask in the sunlight.  We further include some prototypes to support our growing ideas. Sometimes we even raise questions to make sense of our curious minds of the world around us. Usually, on Fridays we reflect on our learning experiences over the whole week and think together about our planning further. We understand another significant moment is approaching, we include a storybook titled Twelve Gifts For Santa Clause. The storybook offers many perspectives to us. The illustrations make us think about the efforts that Santa put to fulfill our wishes. We come up with the question on How do we make Santa happy? as one of our many ways to think about giving back, instead of always being the receiving end. Lukah: By laughing. Brooks: Hugging. Fides: Hamster. We further clarify with Fides about his interest is to play with Santa and his hamster.  It’s always interesting to hear various points of views. Emily seems really excited towards the page that is having some snow pictures. She mentions snow is coming.  In upcoming weeks we are going to unpack further about birds and nests. Another way to make connections between our interests on birds is to intertwine it with making some Christmas ornaments for our Christmas tree.
Kindest, Children & Friends.
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