We have our own bird feeder

So many people to ask permission with before we could finally put up a bird feeder. We took a field trip outside after recess today to put up our very own bird feeder outside our window.

Its one of those seed bells. We have an amazing teacher for 2 periods on day one who bought it for our class and took us out to put it up. I bought two Dollarama stools for our dramatic play area so the children can see out the window. We also put up a sign that says "bird watching" and added some posters to the area of birds to look for. Let's hope we see some soon!

Bird Inquiry

Birds.

"Why do birds fly south?" one child asked. And birds we have been talking about ever since. 

We brought in loads of bird books, changed our dramatic play centre to have more natural material. Filled out sensory bin with sunflower seed and brought in lots of pictures of birds. 

I found this FANTASTIC sight www.feederwatch.org where you can watch a live Ontario bird feeder (there is also a cam in New York too). We connect to this birdfeeder and watch it all day on our virtual window. It had been an AMAZING way to introduce the children to birds.

We see a bird and then we figure out what it is by looking in our bird books or exploring the website. We have me evening grosbeaks, pine grosbeaks, european starlings, blue jays, ruffed grousse, chickadees, gray jays, downy woodpeckers and black crowned sparrows. I will post more about birds as we explore more about them. 

Personalized puzzle

This is very challenging to share when I need to black out names and faces but I will do my best to explain. One of the most IMPORTANT materials I always like to have is head shots of the children. We took the children's pictures in front of our pull down screen so they all have the white background. Then we just printed out lots of wallet sized copies of their head shots and have used them so many time for so many different things. 

In this instance we made a puzzle:

I had some of those postcards from scholars choice. It was just an apple and it says "Hi" at the top. At the bottom of all the apples we wrote a child's name in permanent marker. Then we laminated one set of the photos put the photos and the post cards in a basket on the shelf. The children loved trying to match the photo to the right name. It helped them to learn names, recognize their friends and feel a sense of belonging in our classroom community.

Trick or Treat

I had a halloween party on the weekend and with the leftover goodies I brought them to the staffroom to fill the staff with potions and poisons (AKA Candy).

Cauldrons, spiders, skulls, cobwebs, and lots and lots of candy.