Birds in the greenhouse

This month the lovely ladies from the Sawtooth Botanical Gardens graciously taught lesson plans for our after school kid's club.

This final session in November, Ilana taught the students all about birds! She didn't bring in any real birds... but the students were able to describe and classify all sorts of birds that they have seen before. What do almost all birds have in common? The can fly... they have wings... they have feathers... they live in nests...

We were able to go through the parts of a bird and label all the different parts of the animal. Great anatomy lesson!

One interesting thing the students learned about birds is that they are very DIFFERENT within the species. All birds have different sizes and styles of beaks depending on where they live, and what they primarily eat.

Woodpeckers have small and narrow beaks...

while bald eagles have larger and hooked beaks.

After identifying the different beaks and how they are used, Ilana introduced a game to play at the end of the lesson.

There are four different birds, all using different tools as "beaks." The goal was to gather as much food from the plate and put it in the stomachs in a few minutes.

A toothpick represented a woodpecker, a cloths pin for an eagle, a spatula for a duck, and chopsticks for a goldfinch.

Collect as many insects as you can for winter, and do it only using the tool and one hand. The students loved this game, and found it challenging to use some of the tools.

What a fun way to end the week in the greenhouse! Thanks again to the ladies from the Sawtooth Botanical Gardens for guest speaking at Bonni's Garden all month.