Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day

To help us stay on course for Science, I decided to purchase a text book. It is called The Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day and it is filled with all kinds of information on all kinds of flying creatures. It is written by a lady who understands the Charlotte Mason concept of learning so it is really well written. The kids love it!

We have been using it for about a month now. So far we have gone on a scavenger hunt and went shopping for a purple martin house. While reading Chapter 2, it came to our attention that a purple martins' diet consist of bugs including mosquitoes. And boy do we have mosquitoes in the summer. So, for part of science class, we went looking for a purple martin house and are hopefully going to be putting up sometime before the summer.

We also just recently bought Florida bird field guides for everyone, except EG of course. The day they came in the mail everyone was so excited. They sat on the couch comparing pictures and figuring out what birds we have in our neighborhood. Nature Girl took it to bed with her that night and went through every bird in the book. They have learned about migration and different nest types. Different bird body parts and how the coloring helps to identify bird types. All this without any input from me!

We have listened to bird songs on the computer and now understand how some birds got their names. Did you know the mockingbird actually mocks other birds' calls?

They have figured out that there are actually two hawks that visit us. They are red shouldered hawks and one is male and the other is female and that the female is actually slightly bigger than the male. All of this from the pocket field guide.

Today, they read that mockingbirds (which we have in abundance) like to eat fruit. So, they made like a feeding trough and put grapes and left over plums in it and put it in the tree house to see if they could get the mockingbirds to eat it.

These are all the things I imagine in my brain my kids having the time and opportunity to do because we homeschool. Not to mention the interest they have in doing them, all by themselves . . .