Birds Have Feathers

I brought in a feather that I found while walking one afternoon that I thought would make a nice conversation piece.

What are feathers? Where do they come from?

The children have naturally started to express an interest in birds because there is a Pileated woodpecker nesting in one of our Oaks on the playground.

We learned that birds are the only animals that have feathers. 

Birds have three kinds of feathers, and the feather that I found was a birds flight feather.

We celebrated this new knowledge and our bird skills by naming species of birds and drawing different types of feathers.

After our initial drawings some children realized that other shapes are similar to a feather. 

I took a few moments the next morning gathering fallen leaves.

The class loved touching and feeling them.

 I set out some paint and decided to leave a provocation for children to transform the dead leaves into feathers using paint and their imagination.

It was a great way to point out how the colors of many feathers are distinct and not muddled together or blended. We practiced keeping the colors on our leaves separate from each other so that our feathers could be vibrant.

This turned out to be a great introduction into the world of birds that may lead to many more moments of inquiry and discovery.