🐧🦉🦢 Birds
I hope you enjoy the Birds Unit Study Lesson Plan! Here is a quick overview:
Bird Watching Journal
Research A Bird
So many Bird Feeders
Bird Pattern Block Designs
Alphabet Seed Writing
Storytime Craft - Pidgeon
Chicken Life Cycle STEM Craft
Bird Anatomy
Animal Adaptations: Birds and Their Beaks
National Birds Around The World
Bird Sensory Bin
Stezzi the Parrot Yoga Adventure
And more...
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Enjoy! Tiff
🐧🦉🦢 Birds
Bird Watching Journal
Go bird watching and learn all about birds with this simple lesson plan. Learn about the anatomy of a bird, what feathers are used for, migration, and the types of birds: Birds of Prey, water birds, seabirds, woodland and forest birds, and flightless birds. Perfect for kids that are curious about birds. Includes a nine page printable book and bird watching journal page.
Dancing With The Birds
By: Netflix
My girls and I loved this intriguing documentary about dancing birds. It was fascinating to discover the intricacy of these mating rituals. We loved seeing how the birds showed off their beautiful colors and amazing dance moves to attract a mate.
Research A Bird
Birds are excellent research topics. There are so many different species to choose from! Pick your favorite bird, draw a picture, think of research questions, observe them in nature and take notes, borrow books to learn more, the possibilities are endless.
My daughter picked the Java Sparrow which is an urban bird that we often see in our yard. Amazingly we noticed that a pair of Java Sparrows just started a nest nearby. And this is after she had picked them to research! At the end of the week, she put together a poster board with her research and presented her project.
Build a Birdfeeder
We love building bird feeders so we have lots of different designs we have tried. We have noticed it sometimes takes a little while for birds to be comfortable with your bird feeder. So be patient!
This one is the fastest and easiest design, and what’s great is the cone is also edible. Please note, this cannot be done with kids who have nut allergies, the seeds stick on with peanut butter.
We had so much fun making these because my girls could make them any shape they wanted. You just use a cookie cutter and bird seed mixed with gelatin to form your feeder. You will need to let these dry overnight.
This version is perfect if your students are interested in woodworking. We found this kit on Amazon, but they also have it at the Dollar Tree. But this does take longer as they need to let the glue set before filling it with feed.
English Language Arts
Alphabet Seed Writing
I love tactile methods of teaching the alphabet. This was a super fun way to practice letter formation. Great for reviewing reversals like b and d. We even lined the larger seeds up on the alphabet cards.
Supplies: plate, bird seed, letter formation flash cards
Reading Lessons
There are only two resources I like to make sure I include on each week’s lesson plan, Prodigies Music (below) and Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons. This book has thousands of 5 star reviews on Amazon for a reason. It’s an effective, no-prep way to teach reading. We have completed this program and the results have been amazing, my daughter can pretty much read anything.
The lessons are short (15-20min), easy to grasp and sequential. The entire lesson is scripted and color coded so it’s fool proof, just read the words in pink. Their claim is that after completing all 100 lessons your child will be able to read at a 2nd grade level!
Math - Telling Time
Bird Pattern Block Designs
Practice basic math skills like counting, shape recognition, and patterns with these fun bird block designs. You will need pattern blocks or tangrams to use these sheets. Melissa and Doug has a great Pattern Block and Boards Set that matches the colors used in this free printable.
What Time Is It?
Explore the concept of time with this no-prep unit. Build a solid foundation for understanding the abstract concept of time with lots of practice. This is a great tie in with the Bird Watching freebie as it asks students to record when they saw the bird.
Start by explaining the different formats of time: digital, analog and written. Then practice filling in a clock, match different time formats, draw in the hour hand and more.
This unit focuses on whole hours and starts with sequential work to help reinforce the concept through repetition.
Units of Time Poster - FREEBIE
I hope you enjoy these two great resources for helping to teach how to tell time. Include the poster in your morning work binder, circle time lesson or post it up in your classroom for easy reference.
Laminate the clock mat or use a sheet protector to use with PlayDoh or dry erase markers. Great for practicing telling time on both analog and digital clocks.
Art and Music
Storytime Craft - Pidgeon
We love the Pidgeon book series by Mo Willems, actually we pretty much love anything by Mo Willems. So this craft was a must do for us!
Just have your students trace their hand on a piece of light blue cardstock. Then cut or punch out a blue circle and 1” x 3” rectangle for his neck. Add a large googly eye, white cardstock band, black pipe cleaners for the legs and a popsicle stick to complete your pidgeon. Now you can have fun placing him in random places around the house, kinda like the Elf on the Shelf, but instead the Pidgeon is in the House!
Supplies: blue, black and white cardstock, circle punch, scissors, sharpie, black pipe cleaners, craft sticks and googly eyes.
Prodigies Music
Do…Re…Mi…
We love Prodigies! Prodigies Music is simply an incredible curriculum for teaching music. Their curriculum is designed to develop a sense of pitch with easy to use desk bells that don’t require any tuning. They also teach piano, recorder and ukulele. Their subscription includes everything you can think of 450+ videos, worksheets, free bell mats, sheet music all color coded so it’s super easy to learn. If you don’t have an instrument they have a bunch of rhythm focused content that doesn’t require an instrument. They even have a free bell app that I use with my toddler when my oldest is practicing.
They have a free trial and discounts for annual memberships! Great deal! You can even check out some of their videos for free on YouTube.
Science - Birds
Chicken Life Cycle STEM Craft
Learn the stages of a chicken’s life cycle with this fun and easy STEM craft. Just cut out the template and life cycle stages, color and assemble.
Bird Anatomy
By: A to Zebra
Learn about the anatomy of a bird while practicing cutting skills with this great freebie. Just print, cut and match the body parts as you go over basic bird anatomy.
Why Do Birds Sing?
By: SciShow Kids
We love these short and informative videos by Jessi and Squeaks. In this one you will learn about songbirds and why birds sing and when they sing most.
Animal Adaptations - Birds and Their Beaks
My daughter loved these 3-part cards so much that I think I’m going to actually laminate them! (that’s how you know they were great).
She loved learning about the different types of beaks and trying to match the beak type to the bird and beak description. The beak descriptions are great and really teach you a lot about each bird.
They have a bunch of other paid bird activities that look great too like these Birds and Their Eggs Matching Cards or these U.S. State Bird 3-Part Cards
Social Studies
Birds of the World - National Birds Around The World
Learn the names for the national birds for each country in this birds around the world tour. This is a fun 13 minute video that gives your students a great overview of the many varieties of birds from around the world. The image of the bird is displayed on the country they are from, which is a fun way to also become more familiar with each country’s shape.
Atlas Crate - Costa Rica
We love getting our monthly Atlas Crate in the mail. We just happened to have this Costa Rica crate with this awesome Macaw craft for Bird Week!
Each kit includes information cards about a country, a recipe, two activities (crafts or games), and a stamp for your “passport”.
I’m pretty crafty, so most craft kits aren’t worth it for me. But their craft kits are exceptional and would be difficult to reproduce on my own. We also love the cards, they have great pictures and you add them to your adventure book each month.
Sensory Play
Bird Sensory Bin
Create a beautiful habitat filled with colorful birds. Just add plastic figurines, bird houses and some eggs and you are ready for play!
We made a makeshift nest out of raffia and used the birdhouses we assembled from woodworking kids. The green rice “grass” was recycled from a previous bin.
Filler: green rice (recipe here)
Supplies: bird houses, bird figurines (we have the Exotic Birds Toob, but their Backyard Birds set looks great too), eggs, plastic trees, rocks, wooden scoops.
Physical Education
Bird Workout For Kids
Go on a Wild Workout with Andy and learn about the hummingbird. Flap your wings as fast as you can and bend down low to drink nectar. Great way to get your students moving before they start their day.
Stezzi the Parrot
By: Cosmic Kids Yoga
Go on a Yoga Adventure with Stezzi the Parrot. Use your cosmonoculars to find him. He’s up in the trees!
We love Jamie and Cosmic Kids Yoga and try to incorporate it into as many units as we can.
Book List
Books We Love
- Little Kids First Big Book of Birds (National Geographic)
- There Is a Bird on Your Head!
- Fine Feathered Friends (Cat in the Hat’s Learning Library)
- A Photographic Guide to the Birds of Hawaii (or a field guide for your region)
Don’t have the budget or space to get more books? The library has been pretty great for us so far, but they are sometimes out of the more popular books. One place that you can always count on to find great books is Epic Books! Try Epic Basic for FREE! You can find awesome read to me books for free, Unlimited plan includes access to 40,000+ books!
Know of any other awesome Birds themed resources? Please comment below!
Do you know anyone else that would enjoy these free weekly lesson plans? Get them on the list!
