Bird Feeder Challenge

February is National Bird Feeding Month! This was a very cool program conceived and planned by Sara, but carried out by me because she was out sick. I actually debated posting it on my blog because this program was not technically mine, but I love the idea and the pictures of all the kids with their finished bird feeders. I figure as long as I don't take credit for the idea, we're good to go.

The Bird Feeder Challenge was a program for school-age kiddos, and had three basic parts. First, we talked about all the aspects that make up a good bird feeder, and why. Second, the kids had some time to make their own bird feeders out of found objects, Crisco (in lieu of peanut butter in case of allergies), and bird seed. Third, each child got a chance to stand up in front of the group and tell us about their bird feeder.

First, we made a list of everything a bird feeder needs to be successful. Here is what they came up with:

I left this list up so they could refer back as they constructed their own feeders. 

The building process:

After the building time was over, some of the kids were reluctant to tell everyone else about their creation. A couple of them preferred to sit instead of stand, but eventually all twelve kiddos told us where the bird(s) stand, how they get their food, and what is special about their creation. 

In addition to being lots of messy fun, there was an important educational element to this program. The actual construction of the bird feeders encourages STEAM concepts such as engineering and architecture. 

If I were to do this program again, the only thing I'd change is taking a little more time at the beginning to talk about bird feeder construction before launching into the list-making. Luckily this group all had a pretty good idea of what a bird feeder is, but not all kids do. This was actually a suggestion made by a mom. I learn something new with every program I present!

Here are some of the kids with their finished bird feeders (posted with parent permission).

Homeschool Corner: Ladybug Life Cycle

A few weeks ago, Maddog (Madi) noticed our patch of cilantro was starting to get a few aphids on it. We talked about what they were doing there: passively drinking sap from the phloem vessels in the leaf cells (a pretty freaky process in which the aphids puncture the thin phloem cell walls and the sap, which is under high pressure, comes gushing out and is forced into the aphids' food canal. Ick). We also discussed how that can hurt the plant by draining it of water and its sugary energy source, and also opening the plant up to diseases. After a quick google search, we learned that aphids can reproduce--very rapidly--by asexual means, pumping out oodles of clones. Live clones. Which, for the record, makes them viviparous (a term we learned from the really cute Ruth Heller book, Animals Born Alive and Well.)

Anyway, we agreed that the aphid invasion was probably the closest thing to aliens we were ever going to witness up close, which is cool, but also that we should probably get rid of them.

I gave her three options: 

1. Rinse them off with soap and water

2. Spray them with pesticides

3. Wait and see if beneficial insects would move in

She wanted to wait.

So we waited.

And waited.

Annnnnnd waited.

While we waited, we read Eric Carle's classic book The Grouchy Ladybug, about an arrogant ladybug who picks fights with animals of increasing size before deciding that maybe he should just share his aphids after all.

Two days later, we saw our first ladybug.

Then a week and a half after that. . . eggs and larvae and ladybugs, oh my!

We spent an afternoon looking for and photographing all the stages of the ladybug's lifecycle, from egg, to increasingly large larvae, to pupae, to adult. We managed to find everything but a pupa (and in the process, got to watch a larva shed its skin "Just like a snake!" and even see two adult ladybugs making some new ladybug babies.)

Eggs

Larva

Shed larval exoskeleton

Mating adults

That offered us the chance to join in a rousing chorus of the ladybug lifecycle song from Capri+3 that's sung to the tune of The Wheels On The Bus:

Ladybug Life Cycle Song

The ladybug starts out as an egg
As an egg
As an egg
The ladybug starts out as an egg clinging to a leaf.

The egg hatches into a larva
Larva
Larva
The egg hatches into a larva
That sheds skin many times

The larva becomes a pupa
Pupa
Pupa
The larva becomes a pupa
That attaches to a leaf.

Inside the pupa a ladybug is formed
Ladybug is formed
Ladybug is formed
Inside the pupa a ladybug is formed
Until it’s ready to crawl out.

We finally rounded up little brother from the sandbox and headed inside. Maddog found her favorite First Discovery book and we curled up to read Ladybugs and Other Insects, which came from Costco about twenty years ago and was mine as a kid. It's still a great book, though, with transparent pages that let you flip from egg to larva, or show the two pairs of wings that ladybugs have (the hard red outer wings, followed by the transparent inner wings that allow the ladybug to fly). 

And that was more or less the end of our ladybug saga. A few days later, they popped up again as the theme of the daily writing prompt. Here I wrote out the numerals and words for one through five, then drew in ladybugs with a number of spots. She had to count the spots, find the numeral, then write the corresponding word. She then drew her own ladybug and wrote how many spots it had (ten).

The daily prompt is an easy, no-stress way to get writing practice each day, since she recently decided the wanted to work on improving her handwriting. Each morning (or afternoon if Mom isn't on top of her game), we come up with a sentence to copy or a prompt to answer, and put it up on the chalkboard wall in the kitchen. Then during the day while I'm cooking or cleaning, she can come in and work on her writing safely out of her brother's helpful reach, and we can talk about the words and letters and sounds while she writes and illustrates. Sometimes we do the dinner menu, other times we do letter matching or word recognition (I write out sight words all over the board, she writes them in a list in the order I call them out). It lets her have some control over what she's learning, so she's engaged in what she's doing (while still enforcing the basics) and often open-ended enough that it's fuel for conversations for the rest of the day!

UPDATE March 15: We found pupae today! Dozens of them, all at once. We had noticed yesterday that many of the larvae were slowing down and beginning to hang by their butts from the leaves, similar to a caterpillar when it is about to form a chrysalis, so we deduced from our caterpillar watching experience that pupae weren't far behind.

Sure enough, as of this morning, we have about 30 pupae, some which we watched pupate in a jar on the kitchen counter. The pupa shakes itself like you would shake a glowstick to distribute the chemicals that help it dissolve its body so it can reform in its little case as a beetle. Watching them turn from black to opaque to bright yellow as the chemicals distribute, and from there darkening to orange, then red, and developing spots, is an amazing process! It can take anywhere from 3 days to 2 weeks for a ladybug to merge, according to google, and the time it takes is dependent on the ambient temperature (with warmer weather resulting in a faster pupation).

I bet within another day or two we will have new adults to release into the garden!