Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Custom Birdwatching Book

Bird book in action

My five-year-old loves birds. She particularly likes identifying them, learning the differences between species ("how do you tell a grackle from a starling?"), and checking them off her mental list of "birds I've seen." The other day, we were playing outside and she asked me, "Mommy, could you make me my own bird book? One where I could mark off the ones I've seen?"

Well, yes, yes I could, because that, my dear, is a brilliant idea.

Hummingbird page

We have a fabulous bird guide that we keep within reach, and reference it often to identify new visitors to our feeders (or just learn more about old friends!). But it's clearly a grown-up book. I absolutely loved her idea of a bird book just for her, where she could record her very own observations. I got right to work.

Really, it was pretty easy. I created a simple template that gives her a place to record sightings, a place to practice writing the name of the bird, and a large box to fill with her own sketches and observations. There is also a photo of each bird, which I simply cut-and-pasted from the internet. I printed out the pages, 3-hole punched them, and put them in a spare binder we had lying around. Presto! Custom birdwatching book.

Cardinal page

I made sure to select only birds that we've actually seen in our backyard (or close by), so as not to clutter up her book with irrelevant pages. At the same time, I wanted to give her a bit of a challenge, so I did include a few birds that either won't return for a few more months (hummingbirds) or are rare and exciting visitors to our yard, like the great blue heron. She was thrilled to flip through the book and discover that she could already identify each of the birds I had included.

It seems like such a small thing. But it is these small things that help to build the bridge between our children and nature. When we give our children the tools to become naturalists, we put them in position to revere and protect our planet. And why not start with our feathered friends?

Cardinal on snowy feeder

12 comments:

  1. What a brilliant idea! I'm going to file this one away for when my son is a bit bigger.

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  2. I just found your blog via Ohdeedoh, and I'm already smitten! I love this idea!

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  3. oh that's so nifty. good job!

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  4. What a great idea! I'm not very good with creating these kind of things. Printing pages with photos, boxes and text intimidates me.

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  5. I love this idea, especially because we're learning quite a bit about birds in our home education adventure right now. Thanks for sharing!

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  6. If there's interest, I'll create some template pages for folks to download. Then you can just print the pages for birds you have locally. Hmm, that might be fun to do... :)

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  7. Oh Laura, this is perfect. We'll be homeschooling next year and I've been striving to find a way to incorporate the things I find important. Thank you!!!!!

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  8. Would LOVE LOVE LOVE it if you posted templates! :)

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  9. What a great book. I love it. I am about to embark on a home schooling journey and this is such a great idea for us. Perhaps you should publish it?

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  10. I love this! I have a new birder, he's 6 and this would be great! Any chance you can post the template?? pretty please?

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  11. Update: I am working on making the templates available for download, really I am! :) Just have to get pictures in there that I have permission to use, as opposed to ones I just grabbed willy-nilly off the internet for no thought to attribution. (Yeah, that would not be nice.) But it's coming along and I will let you all know when the public version is available! :)

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