The Bird goes to school…

You never know where a Sizzix die will show up next! I had a call from my friend Lorine asking if she could borrow my Bird die. Her friend Connie was working on a special project with her class. Here’s what Connie says:

The Great Backyard Bird Count is done across North America and sponsored by Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Audubon Society, and others. We had to observe, identify, and count for 15 min birds visiting the feeders outside each classroom. For the young ones, birds are a great class room activity, bringing the outside “in”.

The children ranged in age from 3 to 6. The three year old class did cardinals (simple color-red with black mask around an orange beak). With the four year old class I added to the cardinals white die cut birds (black capped chickadees), and buff die cut birds (house sparrow). For the kindergarteners I added grey for the tufted titmouse. For our kindergarten enrichment class we focused on house sparrows and used a dark brown base for their birds.

Normally the children would cut, color, and make each bird, but with only 15-25 min there wasn’t time for the children to do each step. Since the goal was identification and counting, the pre-cut birds, combined with photos of each species, allowed the children to pick out the distinguishing characteristics of each species. They used crayons and markers to decorate them. I’m enclosing photos of some of their “birds”. One class used clothes pins to perch their cardinals in the window and other classes made mobiles with theirs. All in all a wonderful craft to our observations. Thank you! Once again, the die cut birds were fabulous!   Connie

What would you make with the Bird die? Come back for a look at another project using this little guy….