By our front window Miss Leyba and I set up this basket with bird guides and Miss Leyba’s binoculars (more on those tomorrow) so we can easily watch and identify birds together. Through the window we have a great view of the blackberry bushes, a dead tree, and an open field, all areas that the birds love to frequent for food and shelter. Next to the basket, we have a poster of common feeding birds found here in Western America that my mom bought for Miss Leyba.

Some of the bird guides in our basket:
– The Backyard Birdsong Guide: Western North America (containing over 130 bird songs!)
– Birds of California Field Guide (Our Nature Field Guides)
– Birds (Fandex Family Field Guides)
– Field Guide to the Laguna de Santa Rosa
– Western Trailside Birds (Peterson Flash Guides)

Often in the early mornings, we sit by the open window and listen to the birds. We watch birds chase each other, fly about exploring our neighborhood, and care for each other. All spring we watched a pair of robins care for their young living in the birch tree in our front yard.

Together we love observing the natural world.

Biologist in the making?! (Like Mama! It runs in the family.) We shall see.

Pardon Miss Leyba’s pajamas and adorable bed head! I didn’t think you’d mind.

We’ve been working on organizing our arts and craft supplies.

I planned on making a writing caddy for our daughter, but we instead found this blue wire caddy at Joann’s on clearance and the little miss insisted we bring it home. Luckily it’s my style too, so I was thrilled to set it up at her play table in the living room. Inside it we keep:

– Letters and Numbers For Me activity book (published by Handwriting Without Tears)
– The complete set of Jan Brett’s free traditional coloring alphabet tracers stapled together with a this free downloadable Handwriting Without Tears Capital Letters Formation Chart
– Lined and blank paper

– Soft pencils and erasers
– Shape and alphabet stencils
– Protractor
– Maria the Scientist Paper Dolls
– Calculator (used primarily as a pretend cell phone)
– A set of butterfly play bank checks that you can download for free!

We keep the writing caddy on the child sized table by the window overlooking our garden. Adjacent to our birding materials (in the baskets/bags on the floor), we’re all set for everyday learning!

Inspired by early morning birding activities (there’s a bird that keeps trying to build a nest on the wind-chime on our porch!), we decided to do some bird drawings of our own.

We drew Sandhill Cranes,

Belted Kingfishers and

Great Horned Owls (clearly a joint effort).

An educational, fun, and creative Mama-Daughter activity.

OUR FAVORITE BIRDING RESOURCES:
– The book pictured above is The Backyard Birdsong Guide: Western North America, a fantastic resource for birders of all ages.
– For a similar online resource, visit The Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s All About Birds website.
– For more of our favorite birding resources, including some great birding books, read our Early Morning Birding post.

My mother is an avid birder and loves to share her enthusiasm and knowledge with us. During her visit she made binoculars with Miss Leyba, a fun and easy project designed to introduce young kids to birding and give them a way to practice looking through their own, homemade binoculars.

Grandma began by cutting a paper towel roll in half. With the intention of wrapping a piece of paper around each of the paper towel tube halves, Grandma and Miss Leyba then cut the paper down to size.

Miss Leyba decorated each piece of paper with crayons and stickers.

They then glued the paper to the tube.

Grandma wrapped each tube with packing tape to seal the paper to the tube and to create a smooth surface to easily hold on to. My mom then stapled the two tubes next to each other lengthwise to form the binocular shape.

Phew! She can see out of them and they fit!

They then used a hole punch to make a small hole on the outside of each of the tubes.

They cut a piece of ribbon the length of a necklace (plus several inches for each side to tie on) and then attached it to the tubes so it could go around Miss Leyba’s neck.

Finally it’s time to head outside and practice looking through those binoculars!

The first step is to practice finding/focusing on stationary items like flowers, leaves, rocks, bird feeders, and trees.

Finally, out in the field “birding” with Grandma.

Since this activity, going out birding has become a favorite activity around here. Thanks for the great project, Grandma!