A Study of Owls

The kids and I just completed our first unit. We studied owls. This was so much fun and yesterday morning I gave them an oral quiz to see what they remembered and they both recalled so much more than I ever expected. I have to say that most of these ideas came from a teacher in Texas (of all places)Mrs. Attaya. She had great ideas and plenty of pictures so I could really see them in action. Some of our highlights included dissecting owl pellets. For those of you who've never done this in a science class, owls swallow mice and other rodents whole and then cough up the bones and fur without it having to go all the way through their digestive tracts. So you simply soak the pellets in water and then carefully take them apart, removing all the bones and disgarding the fur. Then you can try to piece the skeleton back together and figure out what the owl ate. I was so impressed with Ethan's attention span with this. He worked for an entire hour until all of the pellet was examined. Then the next day worked until the whole thing was pieced together and glued. Not bad for a 1st grader.
The kids would say their favorite thing was making owl cookies, not to be confused with owl pellets. We used hershey kisses for their eyes and cashews for the beak. I think we have started a tradition for whenever we make peanut butter cookies from now on--they will be owl cookies. Both kids also had to create a storybook that involved owls complete with illustrations and a cover. Ethan had to make up a story problem about owls and show how to work it. And we also studied owl habitat, specifically trees and what kinds of creatures share the same tree space. They painted a tree and then we put animal stickers in the tree.
We concluded the unit by visiting a Nature House at Goldstream Provincial Park earlier this week. The kids had to tally how many birds of prey they saw (Thanks for this idea, Maria) and we concentrated only on the displays they had that concerned owls and other birds of prey. They had a really neat owl exhibit where you push buttons that turn on a light to showcase a particular species of owl. And push a button for the owl call. The kids had a great time and Clint watched Malcolm for me so he wouldn't be a distraction.

Can you tell how excited I am about this whole project? Of course, it doesn't take much for me to get excited about teaching a unit that showcases birds; we'll have to see how fun it is to talk about pulleys and levers in a few weeks.