TEACHER RESOURCES

On this page:

Games

Bird Word Find
Bird Word Match

Implementing Bird Studies

Scavenger hunt
Birding Buddies
Geography lesson
No birds
Schoolyard feeders
Bird Collage

   Bird Activities: Games and More Ideas for Implementing Bird Studies

More Ideas For Implementing Bird Studies

Conduct an online Scavenger Hunt -- List a variety of facts from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology web sites on a work sheet, then have your students explore the web to find the answers.  You might emphasize the "All About Birds" section of this web site, then have them delve into one of the Citizen Science project web sites (eBird, Classroom FeederWatch, The Birdhouse Network, Project PigeonWatch).  Here's an example of a scavenger hunt worksheet one teacher created. (coming soon -- link to Adobe Acrobat file of teacher's scavenger hunt)

Birding Buddies
Pair up younger and older children (i.e., 1^st graders with 5^th graders) to learn bird ID and other bird studies.

Geography lesson:
Go through one of the Citizen Science databases and look up the city, state, latitude and longitude of the participants. Plot them with pushpins on a wall map. Start with Classroom FeederWatch or The Birdhouse Network which have smaller databases (and are therefore more manageable for this purpose) than Project FeederWatch and Great Backyard Bird Count.

"We love getting everyone's mail (on the Classroom FeederWatch listserv).  My class reads it and looks for the grade, state, latitude, longitude and what interesting fact about birds they can learn from it.  we have put pins on a map of the states we have found."
-- Terry Sams, 4th grade teacher, TN

What to do about no birds at your feeders

Tips for schoolyard feeders

Bird Collage
I had teachers use outlines of pigeons and fill in as a collage with tissue paper.  I suggested students could pick a different pigeon color morph [Note: students also could pick different bird species] to replicate and then all the collages could be joined at corners to form a quilt display.
-- Lynn Tiede, Education Manager, Audubon NY, New York, NY

  Many of the ideas on this page were sent to us by teachers and other educators. Send us your favorite activity idea:

Educator's Guide to Bird Study
Cornell Lab of Ornithology
159 Sapsucker Woods Road
Ithaca, NY 14850

Email: baj3@cornell.edu

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