Owls

[Guest babyjane31]

We are having a visit form our local birds of prey centre this week who will be bringing along a selection of owls to show the children. Whilst we don't usually plan to topics I'm sure this will spark a lot of interest from the children (Owl babies is their favourite story anyway which is why we booked the visit) so am looking for some activities we can plan to extend their play and interest in this area. We will be making chocolate nests, I thought about an investigation table with a selection of sticks, bark feathers etc, maybe bird seed cakes, setting up role play area as a bird watching hide and obviously reading the story Owl babies. Any other ideas? or do you think that enough to start with and then wait and see where it takes us?

[Inge]

Lucky you... we tried this once and they informed us they did not visit this age group as they were unpredictable and noisy for the birds...we are close so little travel involved and no amount of persuasion or discussion would get them to change their mind.. and they are not open to visitors except on certain days so unable to visit..

 

BUT they did visit a nursery if their child was attending it... apparently one rule for some and another for others..

 

Rhyme

 

Wide eyed Owl

Theres a wide eyed owl

with a pointed nose

2 pointed ears

and claws for his toes

He sits in a tree

and he looks at youuuuuu

He flaps his wings

and he says twit twooooooo

 

Make up actions to go with each line.. no tune and lots of regional variations on this one... I have learnt 4 different versions in my time...

 

Inge

[Guest babyjane31]

thanks Inge, I like that and its nice and simple for the children to learn. they love making up extra verses to rhymes too which will work well with this!!

 

thanks again!

 

We are really looking forward to visit we had them come a couple of years ago and it was fantastic all the children got the chance to hold the owls and they flew freely around our room it was lots of fun, the staff were really good with the children and weren't worried at all about their ages. Bit unfair about only visiting settings their children attend, but not much you can do I suppose, things like that do annoy me though!

[Guest]

My son just had this at his school and was really inspired by it!

 

We did an animal rescue centre a while back, lots of bandages, injured animals, animals trapped and needing rescue.

 

Also you can make cute owl faces using left over CDs.

[Panders]

Does the bird hide have to be just role play? During the RSPB big birdwatch in February, we put out extra bird feeders and did some ground feeding too. We covered the windows which looked out on to the bird feeders with sugar paper and left some gaps so that the children could look through and see the birds, but not scare them away. the children just loved it. We put up bird identifying sheets, had the binoculars, they made "lookers", just kitchen roll inners collaged - they made such a simple bird cake, which we got from the RSPB site - room temp lard, rubbed into seeds, nuts, grated cheese and a few raisins, it set over night and we put them into the feeders, the birds just lap it up! We also had a song about woodpigeons (not my favourite bird) which we sung to 10 green bottles tune - a little tricky but it does just 'fit'

 

Five woodpigeons sitting on a wall,

2 were very big and 3 were very small,

along came the wind and caused one to fall,

now there's 4 woodpigeons sitting on the wall

 

think the song came from an old copy of Nursery World, but don't have it anymore - just the song!!!

[Guest babyjane31]

more great ideas thank you,

 

Panders our role play area has a window that looks out over our nature garden how silly that I hadn't though of actually using it as a real hide that will work out really well, I'm off to check out the rspb site now!