Nest Building

We are exploring living things that we might find in the garden this month, and so besides insects and plants, one of our other focus topics is birds. We first started talking about birds and eggs around Easter time, so we've already been building up some background knowledge.

This was our egg/chick exploration table back in March.

  

But today we focused specifically on nests. We read a new favorite book: Mama Built a Little Nest

The book showed us that there are lots of different ways that birds build nests, and that they typically use materials common to their environment. We even read about one bird that uses only their saliva to build a nest! So with a "there's no wrong way to build a nest" mentality, we decided to give nest building a try. I provided different materials found in either our preschool environment or the yard.

I also used this time to share a real, abandoned bird's nest that I found in my yard this winter. It was fascinating to observe the materials used in the nest and how it was tightly woven together to form it's circular shape.

There was a lot of great engineering, fine motor, and problem solving work going on as everyone tried different ways of building a nest.

We discovered that birds have a pretty tricky job! One kid said, "Nests are a little complicated..." It's amazing what birds can do with just their beaks and feet!