Bald Eagles!
Our recent study of bald eagles is another topic that has been child-led and based on children’s interests and needs.
It all started with an eagle cam. We started by periodically viewing the eagle cam at Berry College in Georgia. We saw the eagles sitting on the eggs. I emailed the link home to parents, and some starting observing at home, too. Eventually, one eaglet hatched. We’ve seen the parents bring fish and coots to the nest to feed the baby. We’ve had many interesting conversations regarding the dead animals. “Is the eagle bad because he killed the bird?” (Why did he do it?) “To feed the baby.” We talked about how animals don’t really have choices about what they can eat like people do. An eagle, for example, can not choose to have a salad instead of meat. They are carnivores, and wouldn’t survive on an herbivore’s diet. I knew it made a huge impression when one little girl said, “They’re not good or bad… that’s just…. life!”
I cut out a circle of felt with a six foot diameter (the approximate size of an eagle nest.) We hypothesized and tested our question…. “How many children can fit in a bald eagles’ nest?” The answer that day? 13!
Can you see the life-size felt eagle covering the “eggs?”
Then we wondered: Are you the size of a bald eagle?
We had one child the size of a bald eagle! The body, anyway! No one had arms as long as an eagle’s wings!
We tried non-standard measurements: How many sticks long/wide is an eagle?
Soon, children were building their own aeries (eagle nests) and wondering how tall they ACTUALLY were…
We naturally started discussing fiction vs non-fiction.
We wrote group stories about eagles that were non-fiction. Then the children were encouraged to create their own fictional stories. This one covers both!
“First I want to do non-fiction. Eagles can fly. They have an eyelid that they can see through. They have 7,000 feathers. They have very sharp talons. The even use feathers to build their nest. Now we can do a fiction story. One time an eagle was afraid of flying. So he flied an airplane! He went to Australia. His parents thought it was a good idea. They found another airplane and they all went to Australia. They ate a pigeon. That’s it.” – ES
Some more eagle fun:
Making an aerie with spots for people to hide when it rains:
Eagle phone?
How many children are hiding under the eagles’ nest?
Answer: 9!
Eaglets sitting in an aerie.
Fledglings testing their wings!
Daddy eagle bringing food to the eaglets, while others make the nest bigger.