#1 What's your wingspan?
Kids measured how long their wingspan (fingertip to fingertip) is by having a buddy mark a dot on the paper. For timing purposes and easier directions, I had kids make only one mark on either the left or right side and write their name. Depending on your group you might want to have them make a line across from tip to tip like you can see I did with the bird examples. Either way you have them do it you can still get the comparisons across to them about their arm length vs different birds... or even how they compare to other kids!
#2 Flap it!
We timed how many flaps each person could do in 10 seconds. Everyone recorded their score. I also had some info on the number of flaps certain birds do. You can find info on wingspan and flaps (beats) of most birds online, so what I did was picked some of the birds we had talked about in previous days.
Talking Points for activity 1 &2:
-Why do some birds have large wings and some have small wings?
-Why do some birds flap more than others?
-Why does the hummingbird flap its wings so fast?
-Is there a pattern between wing flaps and wing size?
#3 Bird Relay Races
Simple relay races, but have a criteria kids have to follow for each race.
i.e.:
- typical bird- flapping wings
- Hawk- gliding side to side
- Flamingo or Heron- one arm up high with hand bent to represent the long neck, hop on one leg if you want it more challenging
- Hummingbird- fast fluttering arms and tiptoe
- Penguin- waddle
#4 Birds and Worms
This was a big hit for the younger ones. Traditionally, the game is played with colored toothpicks, popsicle sticks or something similar. Try to have one color match the color of the floor. The main point of this game is to teach about camouflage. Split kids into two teams and have them imagine they are birds. In relay race style have the kids fly over to the "worms" and grab the first 2 they see. First team to all grab their worms wins. Then go over how many of each color were found and discuss why certain colors were picked up more often.
Like I said the Kindergarten/1st graders loved this game so we did a couple different versions. When there were only a few kids playing I had everyone grab 5 worms each. We also didn't do racing teams, they were more interested in counting the colors at the end than the racing part.
#5 Rockin' Robin Musical Trees
Same concept as musical chairs. I made this game "bird themed" by placing hula hoops on the ground to represent tree trucks. Kids had to fly around the trees until the music stopped. To survive in the game you must find an empty tree to live in as soon as you hear the music stop. There are tons of songs about or mentioning birds you can use. The three I used were:
Rockin' Robin- Jackson Five
Three Little Birds- Boy Marley
Blackbird- The Beatles
When it came time to remove trees I used examples of why birds loose habitat (cutting trees for paper and goods, making rooms for buildings, natural tree death like winter and disease) The main message to get across is what happens when trees start to disappear? So do the birds
Hybrid games:
I have an imaginative group and the kids and they came up with different requests and ideas for playing, including that they wanted to play with the trees (hula hoops) and the worms (popsicle sticks) together. SO I ended up just throwing different numbers of worms in each tree then the kids had to decide which trees the bird would most likely choose. The idea was to get them thinking about math and counting the worms in each tree- obviously trees with more food/worms would be ideal places.
