Beaky Blinders

Following our visit to the bush and our explorations of our school garden, we are beginning to realise that we are finding different plants and creatures in different places. We wondered why this is.

This week, we have been pursuing this line of inquiry by thinking about birds. We noticed that at the bush, we saw piwakawaka (fantails) and tui and we also heard riroriro (grey warblers) up in the trees. At school, we more often see sparrows, starlings, magpies and chaffinches. We also thought about what birds we might see when we go down to the beach. Perhaps some seagulls and oystercatchers.

We realised that the birds must be looking for different kinds of foods that they like. A seagull can find a crab at the beach, but not in the bush. A sparrow can find some lunchbox crumbs at school, but maybe not so often at the beach.

Bird beaks give us clues about the kinds of foods they prefer. We explored some different shapes of beaks.

We had a go at making bird beaks.

We tried picking up different things with them. 

We challenged ourselves to see what the biggest, smallest and strangest things were that we could pick up with our beaks. 

Who knew that birds are keen on eating Lego and hula hoops!