Baby Birds

Early June I discovered a nest in the wreath hanging on my front door. I monitored it for a few days hoping that an egg might appear and, low and behold, it did! The girls were super excited to watch the nest fill with eggs. It was always a mystery as to how many eggs would be waiting for us the next morning. We went from one to two and back to one again. The pattern continued until we were set with four eggs. The girls got to where they could predict where the mother bird would land (while chirping her head off) when we would pull the door open to take a peek at the eggs. "Baby bird, baby bird," was often heard whenever the girls were near the front door. They always wanted to look. At first, Adeline was very nervous about the wreath - wavy branches of flowers threatening to touch her - but she soon was asking for up too.

The above put me right to work on making journals for the girls to use when recording their observations. Call it the teacher in me or the compulsion I have to keep things together and neat! I will admit, it was also an opportunity to work with Adeline on gluing, retelling and focusing on a task. After each journal session I was sweaty and sometimes frustrated but we got through them. The girls LOVED them. Adeline started out by only making one or two marks on the page but later on was asking for me to draw things that she could color. She didn't improve much in gluing. She uses a glue stick and will put the glue on the wrong side of the paper. Lila just gets how to glue but Adeline will need lots of practice. She doesn't use her opposing hand to stabilize the paper either which well below her developmental age. Between Adeline's need of constant help and Lila's lack of patience/need to do everything NOW, I was working over time. Not to mention Savannah's help when spelling words.

In the end the journals came out really nice. The girls can look at them and count the eggs, label the baby birds and mama bird while showing some pride in their work.

Unfortunately, the baby birds were born with a cloud of bad luck looming over their nest. About 48 hours after hatching, the baby bird would disappear. The mama bird chucked the last two babies (at least that is what I think happened) and abandoned the remaining egg which still sits in the nest right before we left for the beach. The birds were interesting while they lasted. Thankfully, Savannah handled their premature nest departure pretty well and, well, the twins are too young to question it.

Here is a video of our birds, journals and fun.