Teaching Your Kids About Birds

Whether you are homeschooling your kids full-time, teaching resources for an unexpected break from school, or just wanting to add some fun, educational activities to your family time at home, sometimes it can be a challenge to find simple ideas that you can use

I’ve joined up with a great group of bloggers who are meeting this challenge by giving you a wide variety of easy ideas you can use right now in your home. I chose to take my wildly popular birds unit (from back when I was an elementary school teacher). The kids loved these activities and even I learned something new about birds! Teaching your kids about birds is easy and fun!

You can find all of the ideas for elementary age students as well as tweens and teens here. This will be added to over the next week or two as more ideas come in so be sure to keep checking back for more!

Teaching Your Kids About Birds

Below you will find recommended books, activities, and snacks/lunch ideas all related to birds!

Disclosure: Some of the links in the post below are affiliate links provided for your convenience. This means that if you purchase something through one of these links, I get a small commission at no added cost to you.

Books about Birds

Teacher Recommended, Kid Approved!

Don’t forget that if you can’t find the books in your local bookstore, you can order them online. Many are available on Kindle as well! And of course, you can check your local library too.

Snacks / Lunches

Bird’s nest cookies.

Bird-shaped sandwiches – use bird-shaped cookie cutters or trace around cardboard templates.

Baby bird treats

Bird’s nest cupcakes

Mock bird’s nest soup

Activities

How good would you be at using a beak? This is a fun activity for the kids to try acting like a bird.

Gather up a few simple materials from around your house (don’t worry if you can’t find them all!): a spoon, a clothespin, tweezers, safety scissors.

You’ll also need: seeds (preferably some in their shells like sunflower seeds), dried beans to symbolize beetles, macaroni or small seashells or something similar to represent snails, pipe cleaners or something like that to serve as worms. Again, improvise, use what you have, and don’t worry if you can’t find some of them.

Let the kids try out various combinations of “beaks” and “food” and see which ones work the best. My students loved this activity and they learned a lot about why different birds eat different types of foods.

This website has a PDF you can download showing the various different types of beaks (and feet) that birds have and the differences in the ways they’re used (for picking up seeds, breaking things open, tearing things apart etc).

Try your hand at nest making!

If you can safely gather up some natural materials in your backyard, that in itself can be a great way to get the kids outside and active. Let them try using those items to build their own bird’s nest.

If you can’t go out, try finding some things around the house – scrap paper, yarn, and other bits and pieces can also be used in place of the natural items. Of course, getting to see a real bird’s nest would be fantastic. You might have one in your yard that can be observed from a safe distance without disturbing the birds.

When you can, a visit to a local wildlife education center would be another great way to get a close up look at different types of birds’ nests. In the meantime, there are quite a few time-lapse videos on Youtube showing birds buildings nests like this one.

Make bird feeders.

Reminder: Don’t put the feeders out unless you have access to bird seed and can keep them filled. Birds will come to depend on them.

Cereal box bird feeder

Milk or juice carton bird feeder

Craft stick bird feeder

Pinecone bird feeder – Tie yarn or thread around one end of the pinecone to form a hanger. Spread peanut butter or sunflower seed butter all over the pinecone. You can use a popsicle stick to make it less messy. Roll the pinecone in birdseed. Hang in a tree.

Cheerios strings – String Cheerios on a piece of yarn. Tie the two ends of yarn together and hang in a tree.

Paint a birdhouse – when able to go to a store (or if they’re delivering) dollar stores often carry plain wooden ones for painting. You can also order (but they’re more expensive) from Amazon.

Make Clothespin Bird Buddies.

These clothespin bird buddies are quick and easy to make. You probably have what you need on hand, but the dollar store or Amazon can certainly provide you with the rest. Can’t get the supplies there? Try using what you do have – construction paper, magazine pages, cereal boxes and so on.

Go bird watching.

Make binoculars and go bird watching. If you can go for a walk safely, head on out and start looking for some birds. If not, how about looking for birds in your backyard or through your window.

None of the above are possibilities? Have an indoor bird hunt! Print out pictures of birds and hide them around the house. Let the kids go looking for them and see how many they can find. No printer? Get the kids to draw their own birds and then you hide those for your bird watching session.

TIP: Unsplash is a great place to find beautiful copyright-free bird images you can use in your bird unit.

Toilet paper roll binoculars

Check out these fun activities from Museum London:

They are offering their Imagination Station at Home and one week’s theme was birds. It includes a checklist (with images) for finding birds in your backyard, an I Spy page, a lesson on how to draw a bird, and a craft idea for making a bird from scrap yarn. In addition, it includes an observation lesson to go along with one of the paintings from the museum.