Building Nests

My class and I have been diving head first into birds lately as part of our animal unit.  I will be having some activity freebies we used in our science notebooks coming soon.  But for today, I am sharing our adventure of making a bird’s nest.

It was an absolutely gorgeous day and during planning I was sitting there trying to think of a way to get my class back outside during science time.  I had a completely different lesson planned but switched it up at the last minute. 

I ran down to my besties’ room (Lyndsey from A Year of Many Firsts)  and she helped my idea come to life.  She had the brown paper lunch bags I was searching for.  Thank goodness!

This was our end result:

First we talked about our background knowledge on how nests are made and where they are located.  Many students shared finding them as well as cracked eggshells, etc.  Then it was time to get our “nests” ready.  I had the students write their names on the bottom of the bag then we began rolling the back down, just like you would roll your sleeves.  I stressed working slowly so bags didn’t tear.  We only had one major ripped in half bag!  I was impressed!  Once they were ready to go we left them on our desks and watched a CUTE video on finding/making a nest for eggs without a nest.  It is available on my county’s video website but I believe you can watch it on PBS Kids. 

The Cat and the Hat Knows A Lot About That (Episode- Nest Best Thing) 

We decided that when we made our nests we would avoid mud and worms.

Can you imagine what a mess that would have been!?

Then we went searching for things around the school’s campus.  The kids LOVED this!! A teacher tried to stop and talk to one of my kids and they politely said that they were too busy to talk because they had to work on their nest!  HOW CUTE!

Here are some more pictures from our adventure!

The students found twigs, acorns, grass, weeds, pine needles, yarn, etc.