4-H Cloverbuds – Birds

Our latest unit with our 4-H Cloverbud Group was Birds.   We ended up holding our field trip before our library meeting due to illness (mine).

We took a trip to the Trailside Nature Center and started with a nice hike through the woods.  To the kids, this meant running as fast as possible along the trail.

The kids had a great time exploring a Lenape wigwam, bird viewing windows, a night display where they could experience nocturnal animals, and a discovery room.

 

A few weeks later, we had our library meeting.  We started with a trivia game about birds.  I used the question cards and Fun Fact cards from our Camp game.

The question cards contain multiple choice questions at four different difficulty levels.   The Fun Fact cards contain…fun facts.  I reworded the facts into True or False questions.  

I try to avoid direct competitions so we played as more of a collaborative game.  I had all the kids line up at one side of the room.  I would read the question and all the choices, then they would put one hand up and, using sign language signs for a, b or c, or thumbs up/thumbs down for true/false, indicate what they thought the correct answer was.  In reality, they yelled out the answer while bouncing up and down.  Everyone who answered the question correctly would take a step forward.  If the answer was wrong, stay in place. 

I used mainly the level one or two questions like:  “What shape does a flock of geese fly in: a) V, b) I, c) L”  or “What color is a cardinal? a) red, b) blue, c) green”.  But there were a few harder ones like: “True or False, the nuthatch is a bird that can walk upside down along a tree truck” or “True or False, the ostrich is the largest bird in the world and can reach 9 feet tall”.   The kids did a great job and learned quite a bit about birds.

We then discussed:

What birds have:  feathers, wing
What birds do:  fly, some swim, some run
What birds eat:  seeds, berries, worms, fish

Our second game the kids pretended to be birds looking for food.  Each kid had a nest on the floor out of masking tape.  Scattered around the room was food (plastic bugs from our bug hunt).  The kids searched for food while music was playing.  When the music stopped, if they weren’t back to their nest, they had to drop whatever they were holding.  They could only collect the amount of food they could hold in one hand.

  

After that game, we moved on to our crafts.  As usual, Legos were available to anyone who didn’t want to do crafts.  I provided paper, scissors, glue, feathers, eyes, markers, crayons and paper bags to let the kids make their own birds.