Some of our best teachers are our feathered friends. We humans, big and small, are enamored of birds. Birds amaze us with their ability to fly, captivating calls, aptitude as builders and remarkable methods for surviving winter. This week, continue the bird play at home with a roundup of some of our favorite ways to help kids fall in love with our feathered friends as they play like birds.
The Guide
Discover the birds who live in your area.
Read our Backyard Bird Count DIY for tips for getting kids involved in discovering and learning about the birds in their area. As you search for birds in your outdoor space, feel free to offer kid-sized binoculars or make your own using toilet paper tubes! See how here.
Add a prop or costume to spark play.
“Becoming” a creature is a timeless and powerful way for kids to better understand and love that creature. The addition of a simple prop or costume may be all your child needs to jump right into active imaginative play.
Bird beak: Find a toilet paper tube or cut ¼ of a paper towel tube. On one end of the tube, cut out a U-shape on both sides to create the illusion of an open beak. On the other end of the tube, use a hole puncher or scissors to make a hole underneath each “U”. Cut 2 pieces of yarn or twine, each about 1 foot long and tie one end of each string onto each hole. Kids wear their beak by placing the tube over their mouth or nose and tying the two ends of the twine behind their head. see how here.
Bird wings: To make wings out of fabric, gather fabric in the middle and tie a piece of yarn or twine around the center and then tie the loose ends around your child’s waist. Gather the top two ends of the fabric and tie each one with a piece of yarn and then around each of your child’s wrists. To make wings out of paper, cut out wing shapes from a paper bag or piece of cardboard, leaving the two sides of the wings connected. Use scissors to cut two holes in the middle of the wings. Then, thread twine or yarn through the holes and tie around the waist. Kids can use paint or markers to decorate their wings, too! See how here.
Build a nest.
Gather small sticks and ribbon, yarn and/or paper scraps and invite kids to form their materials into a circle shape to make a soft and cozy bird nest. You can also offer forest putty to help stick nest-building materials together or to form balls for pretend eggs for their nests. For an extra challenge, invite kids to put their thumb and first finger together to make a bird beak. Can they use their bird beaks to pick up and place their nest-building materials?
Build an Explorer-sized nest!
For a big-sized challenge, collect an assortment of larger sticks and wonder with kids if they could build a nest big enough for them to sit inside. Work together to create an outline of a circle on the ground.. Then, keep adding sticks to the shape to create a thick outline. Wonder what kind of inside you’d want for the eggs. Gather soft and light materials and fill in the inside of the nest. Once the nest is complete, children can enjoy playing mother bird, sitting on imaginary eggs. Or, kids can be the baby birds, chirping for their snack. Read our Nest For Explorers DIY for more ideas.
Sing with the birds.
Listen for bird sounds. Do you hear bird calls or bird songs? If you hear a song, what does your child imagine the song is about? If you hear a call, what does your child think the birds are trying to communicate? You can also use an app like SongSleuth or BirdGenie to identify the birds in your area by their sounds.
When you hear a bird sound, try to imitate it and listen to see if the bird responds to your call. Can you engage the birds in “conversation”? Invite kids to pretend to be a real or imagined bird and make up their own bird calls and bird songs. Play a game of hide and seek while giving each other “clues” to your location using bird calls. Or, attempt a conversation together using only bird sounds.
Search for treasure like Magpies.
Magpies are often featured at Tinkergarten for their unique nest-building behavior. Tales have been told of magpies stealing shiny objects, like jewelry and coins to adorn their nests (recent research suggests that these birds are much more interested in food than shiny objects). Watch the read-aloud of More by I.C. Springman, a story about a magpie and their collection of treasures. Listen to the calls of magpies and try to replicate the sounds with kids. Then, print out our magpie scavenger hunt worksheet and invite kids to search their outdoor space for treasures a magpie would use for food, nesting materials and more! Read the full Magpie Scavenger Hunt DIY here.
Build a tool to observe robin nests.
Hunt for and find a bird’s nest—targeting a bird whose nests are easy to find and reach like the robin. Talk with kids about the nest, what they notice and what they think might be inside. Then, challenge them to use a few simple materials (mirror, string, scissors) and anything around them to make a tool to spy inside the nest without disturbing the nest or its tenants in any way. Read the Glimpse a Robin’s Nest DIY for more ideas.
Play and care for Hummingbirds.
Hummingbirds are the smallest migrating birds in the world (weighing less than a dime!). Hummingbirds fly like no other, flapping their wings more than 50 times per second! Hummingbirds are also fantastic pollinators, using their long, slender beak to drink nectar, spreading pollen from flower to flower in the process. Read our Celebrate Hummingbirds DIY for ideas on how kids can play like hummingbirds, attract hummingbirds to your outdoor space, care for migrating hummingbirds and more!
Why is this activity great for kids?
Wildlife ecologist Washington Wachira says, “The love of birds can be a huge gateway (for children) to appreciating all forms of nature.” Pretending to be a creature is a super way for kids to take on another’s perspective, a cornerstone of cognitive empathy. Learning about birds through play is also a great way to get kids hooked on science while nurturing their problem solving skills and curiosity.
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Imagination is defined in many ways, but one we like is, "the act or power of forming a mental image of something not present to the senses or never before wholly perceived in reality." This is no small task to little kids, and yet young childhood is a time in which imagination is developed more than any other. How does imagination develop in childhood? Through an increasingly sophisticated life of make believe.
We all likely have a sense of what we mean by make believe or good old "pretend play." How do experts define it, though? To some, there are different types of make believe that vary in sophistication and make pretend play different than other types of play. For example, kids may use objects to represent something else (e.g. a block becomes a cell phone). Or, they may start to give an object certain properties (e.g. a doll is asleep or a tree is on fire!). Still yet, they may themselves take on the properties of someone or something else.
From there, pretend play evolves into acting out scenarios or stories, those getting increasingly intricate as imagination develops. As kids' pretend play grows more sophisticated, these stories come to involve not only the creative use of objects, but multiple perspectives (e.g. good and bad guys in the same story), and/or the playful manipulation of ideas and emotions (e.g. I am sad, but then become happy after I save the village from certain doom).
Why does it matter?
An ever growing body of research substantiates the many benefits of pretend play including the enhanced development of: language and communication skills; self-control and empathy; flexible and abstract thinking; and creativity. These are the skills that will help kids balance emotions, form healthy relationships, work effectively on teams, stay focused in school, be successful at various jobs and solve the problems of an increasingly complicated world. An individual's creativity in particular, both requires and is limited by her imagination.
Problem Solving
Category:
Thinking Skills
What are Problem Solving Skills?
When we talk about problem solving, we mean the ability to solve a problem in which the solution is not obvious and in which the possible paths to solution are many. To solve such problems, kids will need two things. First, they’ll need the self confidence and comfort to both attempt to find and persist in finding a solution. The only way to develop this is to be given the chance to struggle with ambiguous situations or open-ended problems. We parents are all guilty, from time to time, of helping kids avoid struggle or swooping in to alleviate frustration when our kid encounters challenge. The goal is actually to do the opposite whenever possible. As long as the problem is not too difficult to understand or challenging to solve, even young kids can get comfortable with the feeling of not knowing the solution and fall in love with the joy of finding a solution to a problem.
Kids also need strategies to attack problems with which they are faced. If adults are able to work with kids to solve problems “as a team” but in such a way that the children feel and act “in charge” of the decisions, adults can actually teach foundation problem solving skills and strategies through modeling. For example, when you solve a problem together, kids get practice with key parts of the process like brainstorming, testing ideas, revision and solution. It’s also pretty easy to model how to use simple strategies like trial and error or breaking a problem down into smaller parts. Although children age 1 to 7 should not be expected to name, catalog or identify when to use a particular problem solving strategy, they are able to form habits and repeat approaches once those habits or approaches have become familiar. The more problems they solve, the better they know and can use these methods.
Why does it matter?
“The highest ranked skills for students entering the workforce were not facts and basic skills; they were applied skills that enable workers to use the knowledge and basic skills they have acquired” (Source: Are They Really Ready for Work? Conference Board 2006).
Although it seems a long way to go before our young children are hitting the job market, the ability to solve challenging, ambiguous problems has already been identified as a critical skill for success in the 21st Century. With advances in technology, finding information has never been easier. However, knowing how to interpret a problem and use available information to devise a solution still needs to be learned. And, we fear that the classrooms of today are neither designed nor incentivized to teach these skills effectively. In most schools, so much time is spent learning discrete skills, that applied skills like problem solving are wildly underemphasized. In a world that demands it, it is increasingly necessary that children learn and practice these skills outside of school.
Empathy
Category:
Social Skills
What is Empathy?
Simply put, empathy is the ability to think and care about the feelings and needs of others. The good news is, the more we study, it appears that children are empathetic by nature. All we need to do is nurture it in them—that of course is now always easy. Even though young children are simply working on gaining control over their emotions and won’t learn to really think about their emotions and the cause and effect of their behavior on others until their school years, they can start to develop the foundation for empathy much earlier. Taking actions (and watching adults take actions) that benefit other people, caring for animals and their environment and even just wondering how other people or creatures are feeling helps build both positive habits and a strong base for the development of empathy.
Why does it matter?
Empathy is at the root of what psychologists call “pro-social” behavior—behavior that people must develop in order to develop a conscience, build close relationships, maintain friendships, and develop strong communities. Empathy also helps kids avoid bullying, one of the most worrisome social challenges young kids face. Being able to think and feel for others can keep kids from becoming either bully or victim and equip them to stand up for others who are bullied. Imagine if all kids had such tools!
Age: 0 to 8+
Time: 1 hour+
Materials: sticks and other natural and household objects
