5 Bird Activities for Kids - Bird Inspired Forest School Activities

What type of bird are you? Hi, I'm Lou and this is Lily Mo. Thanks for tuning in to this video which is five bird-inspired ideas for forest school. So, we're going to share with you some ideas that we have used at Forest School programs. It's by no means definitive, there's tons of ideas and bird-related stuff out there but, you know, we thought it's that sort of time of year, spring is on the horizon and who knows what the birds are up to, you know, they could be doing all sorts of things. Also, just to let you know, I have put a bird bundle on my buy me a coffee page, on my extras page, completely free and in that bird bundle it takes you to a google drive that has basically got a load of activity ideas and things in it that might be useful to you. But, of course, do remember that forest school is not all about the activities, you know, we wouldn't necessarily go about doing a big structured activity with the whole group but, however, as a forest school leader it is useful to have some ideas up your sleeve or in the woods so that if you do find your learners interested in birds then maybe you want to kind of pull out some of these ideas to share with them. So, the first bird-inspired idea for forest school that I thought I'd share with you is to listen for bird language. So, the birds are messengers, they talk about what's going on in the woodland and if you pay attention to them you might also be able to kind of tap into their secret network of what's going on. So, all birds have different vocalizations, different types of voices and John Young, who has spent a lot of time with different indigenous people, has kind of learned this bird language skill from them that apparently all indigenous peoples pay attention to the voices of the birds to find out what's going on, you know, to know whether there might be predators approaching and so understanding both the voices and also the behaviors of the flight patterns and where the birds are perching and whether they're being completely silent unnaturally as well can all tell us maybe about what other species are present. John has actually written a book about bird language which I'll pop the link in the description below for you but as an example some of the types of voices of the birds are, so you can think about the baseline voices and behaviors of the birds and there are four different types of vocalizations so songs, so that sort of really kind of fancy, often in many birds, kind of fancy vocalizations that they're using to attract mates and in that courtship display type stuff, then there is companion calling, so that's kind of like checking in with each other, so in the UK like listening to flocks of tits at this time of year can be quite good for that because you hear them go and they're just sort of kind of going, are you all right? Yeah, I'm all right, where are you? I'm over here, kind of thing, so it's like they're checking in with each other. Then there is like territorial kind of vocalizations, again in the UK robins are quite good for this because they're very territorial and it's kind of imagining and get off my land in kind of bird language, but you know it's just a squabble between a couple of birds and then there's also later in the spring when they've got their babies, the begging kind of cheeps and chirps from the young birds as well, the juvenile begging kind of vocalizations, so all of those vocalizations in the bird world are normal, part of day-to-day life. Then there's a fifth voice which is their alarm calls, which is when there's something wrong, you know a predator's coming, there's a cat coming or something that's and they can also be like if you're in the woods and there's like an unnatural silence like none of the songbirds are vocalizing, that might be because there's like a sparrow hawk or something around because with aerial predators they want to kind of keep quiet because they don't want to give away where they are, whereas ground predators then of course birds can fly so they can kind of hop out the way of ground predators. So listening to these voices, this bird language can give you an added insight as to what's happening all around you in the woods and you don't need to know like the species specific calls to understand whether a bird is alarm calling or whether it's just part of their day-to-day life, so you don't even need to know the name or be able to identify the birds to be able to access bird language, so it can be a great thing for even quite young children to kind of start listening into. It's also great to do when you're at your sit spot if you use sit spot routines so you could encourage the children just to you know get their deer ears going and see if they can listen for any voices of the birds. So the next game is quite a structured one but I've used it to randomise a group into pairs, so say you want them to pair up for talking buddies for a circle time or something like that it could be used in that way, not something to facilitate free play, and I call it Find Your Flock and it's all about the voices of the birds and so what I've got here is I've got two sets of cards all with birds on and the name of the bird and their song in sort of how we might say it in human language and both sets of cards are identical and you need enough cards for the number of players and so for this game you want to split the players into two even groups and I find it useful to spread the groups the two groups far apart if you can to give you a bit more of a playing field and then you will give take one set of cards and let the players randomly select their card do the same for the other set of players the players have got to keep their card secret not from their group but from the other group and then because it's you know nearly spring time and all the birds have to find their mates hang on stay there stay there a minute all the birds have to find their mates they've got to sing to find them so you've got to make the sound of your birds do you remember how it goes yeah oh you want to be an owl you're a nuthatch today so in a minute we're going to sing like nuthatches and we're going to see if we can find our mate as in can you find the other nuthatch ready so it's nearly spring and we're going to find our flock ready i can't hear any other nuthatches is there another nuthatch in the woods anywhere i'm a lonely nuthatch i haven't got any friends you're my friend it is spring find your flock so the next bird inspired idea is to create a bird hide so we have come across this lovely den built out of sticks that we can hide in and use our binoculars but you could also use tarpaulins you know camouflage pattern would work well or you can sometimes buy those sort of nets with all the camouflage stuff on them or maybe you could even create like a permanent bird screen bird wide screen using like willow or hazel sticks like a big fence with holes in and then you can use that to hide behind and see if any birds will come closer to you and uh yeah see what you've got who is there in the tree so the next idea is if you want to start learning the actual species of birds and learn more what they look like and sound like then you can get these lovely toys that have got the real sounds of the birds in them that are quite quite accurate um and again for younger learners i found these really good they're kind of their markings are sort of vaguely accurate well as much as a stuffed toy can be um and yeah the voices are really accurate i've even had robins come to the toy robin and like go you know do that kind of territorial kind of vocalization kind of what was this new robin on my patch um so that can be a nice gentle introduction to actually learning different species and then you know who knows they might need nests or homes to live in and all sorts of things could then be sparked all sorts of ideas could uh could start happening in the free play so the final bird inspired activity is to feed them because then if you put feeders out the birds might come closer to you looking for their grub so of course there are lots of different ways you can do that you could buy a feeder and fill it with seeds or you could make your own so we've got just a few ideas here about what you could do so for example you could make something out of plastic bottles for a bit of recycling there just stick some sticks in it as little perches and fill it with your seed you could thread on the lovely hooped cereal and thread them onto strings to make like almost like bird friendly tinsel or younger children often find it easier to thread onto pipe cleaners rather than string lily rose eating the food or these are fairly simple to make and using natural materials so using a cone and some lard and some seeds and a bit of string and then you've kind of got like natural bird feeding baubles that you can kind of hang in the trees so should we make one of these bubs you're eating are you a bird you're a bird okay lily rose a bird and eating the seed so i reckon we should get this nice big cone do you think we should get this big cone and we're going to get a piece of string because do your string first before you do the lard good i have this coat thank you and then we're going to tie our string to the cone okay all right bubs you hold that and then we've got some lard that is softened up a bit and we've got our bird seed we're going to add in our bird seeds like so and we're going to mush it all up do you want to help lily do you want to help stir or pour in some more seed for me you're gonna eat it instead you're a bird okay that's good to know and then once you're ready you're gonna take the lard and seed mixture and basically get it right in the cone so stuff it full in the gaps i'm just using a teaspoon to do that but other things like twigs and stuff probably would do the job as well if they're small enough to get in there and just keep going till you've coated your whole cone and then you can hang it up to feed the birds so there you go ready to hang let's put them up in the trees shall we shall we hang them in the trees so there you go five bird inspired ideas for forest school do you have many more let us know in the comment section below well how do you celebrate the wonderful life of birds when you're out in the woods don't forget um we have got our bird bundle on our buy me a coffee page completely free so head on over there i'll pop a link in the description below and you can kind of access that google drive to uh celebrate our feathered friends if you've enjoyed this video do give us a thumbs up and consider subscribing to our channel so that you can join us again in the woods next time and thanks for watching playing with birds is lots of fun especially now that spring is sprung we hope these activities spark curiosities in your learner's play when you head to the trees