Birds

Books

🌿🌻Birding For Babies: Backyard Birds by Chloe Goodhart (illustrated by Gareth Lucas)
This is a sturdy board book with simple rhyme and rhythm featuring native North American birds– most of which are native to Minnesota! It’s also a counting book with simple illustrations that make for good one-to-one counting practice. I would love to see more books about native animals done in this style for babies!

🌿🌻Birding for Babies: Migrating Birds by Chloe Goodhart (illustrated by Gareth Lucas)
Where Backyard Birds is a counting book, Migrating Birds is a book of colors. When we read this book, we also wave “bye” to each of the birds that will be leaving to fly south (even though some of these birds are not found here in Minnesota).

🌿🌻Owl Babies by Martin Waddell (illustrated by Patrick Benson)
In this classic board book, three young owlets wait and wish for their mother owl to return to their nest in the tree. As they wait on a branch, they try to reassure themselves that she will be back soon!

🌿🌻Words of the World: Birds by Blue Dot (illustrated by Motomitsu Maehara)
This multilingual book features simple illustrations of 13 birds along with their names in English, Chinese, Hindi, Spanish, French, Arabic, and Esperanto.

🌿🌻V is for Vulture by DK Publishing (illustrated by Kate Slater)
This illustrated Animal Alphabet board book features alliterative facts about vultures from around the world, including black vultures, king vultures, and Andean condors.

🌿🌻P is for Parrot by DK Publishing (illustrated by Sandhya Prabhat)
This illustrated Animal Alphabet board book features alliterative facts about parrots from around the world, including macaws of South America and cockatoos of Australia.

🌿🌻Flutter! Fly! by Kaaren Pixton
This textless Indestructibles book for babies features beautiful illustrations of different birds.

🌿🌻Birds by Kevin Henkes (illustrated by Laura Dronzek)
Though this board book lacks rhyme and rhythm, the ideas expressed are simple and from the heart. The author describes what birds are like, dreams fantastic imagery of the sky, and voices questions they have about birds.

🌿🌻Little Naturalists: Rachel Carson Cared About Our World by Kate Coombs (illustrated by Seth Lucas)
This board book introduces children to the work of Rachel Carson, a marine biologist who observed the effect of pesticides on ecosystems and wrote a book, Silent Spring, that moved people to save birds, and other wildlife by restricting the use of poisonous chemicals in agriculture.

🌿🌻Whose Nest is Best? by Heidi E. Y. Stemple (illustrated by Gareth Lucas)
This lift-the-flap board book shows different shapes and sizes of nests built by different species of birds (with featherless babies illustrated under large flaps). The end of the book also features a Memory game with smaller flaps.

🌿Bird Count by Susan Edwards Richmond (illustrated by Stephanie Fizer Coleman)
This book walks readers through citizen science and biological surveys from a child’s perspective of the Annual Christmas Bird Count held from North America to Antarctica. We learn how surveyors keep track of the birds that they see and hear, and which observed birds can be confirmed and counted.

🌿 Ruby’s Birds – Mya Thompson (illustrated by Claudia Dávila)
A bored young girl goes to Central Park with a neighbor and is introduced to birdwatching. After a small learning curve, she learns to hone her skills and later returns to the park with her family to share her new interest–and a very special find–with her family!

🌿Owl Moon by Jane Yolen (illustrated by John Schoenherr)
A child takes their first venture out into the night snow with their father to try to find an owl. Through silence and cold, they wait patiently, hoping they’ll be lucky enough to hear an owl call back. The special encounter described in this book is mesmerizing, and I always end up reading the whole book in hushed tones.

🌿Mell Fell by Corey R. Taybor
She believed she could, and so she did! Young kingfisher Mell is determined to learn to fly, despite her fears, and takes a leap of faith– or, rather, a dive of faith. This book is oriented in a fun and unusual way that lends to Mell’s fall down, down, down from the tree and flight back up, up, up to her home nest. Even if kingfishers don’t normally live in trees, this book is a wonderful addition to bird units.

🌿Bird Builds a Nest by Martin Jenkins (illustrated by Richard Jones)
Following a robin carefully building a nest out of twigs and grass, this science-focused book also explores the concepts of Push and Pull.

🌿Secrets of the Loon – Laura Purdie Salas (illustrated by Chuck Dayton)
This beautiful rhyming story follows Moon Loon from shoreline egg to first migration as parents and instincts teach her everything that she needs to survive. With beautiful photo illustrations, this is a wonderful book to any Minnesota book collection.

🌿The Nest That Wren Built by Randi Sonenshine (illustrated by Anne Hunter)
This rhythmic book details the process of a hopeful father wren building a nest for his eggs. It loosely follows the pattern of nursery rhyme The House That Jack Built, without cumulating verses.

🌿North, South, East, West by Margaret Wise Brown (illustrated by Greg Pizzoli)
A young bird on her maiden flight must choose which direction to travel and decide where to make her home–but which is best? After exploring each direction, she finds which location has all the conditions she needs for comfort.

🌿Little Loon & Papa – Toni Buzzeo (illustrated by Margaret Spengler)
Little Loon is uninterested in learning to dive and wanders off. He encounters other animals at the shoreline that startle him. Peeping in alarm, Little Loon must put his diving lessons to the test to return safely to Papa’s side. This book features three other animals native to the north woods– can you identify them?

🌿Nesting by Henry Cole
This story includes detailed partial-color illustrations of a robin building a nest and raising chicks in an apple tree.

🌿Even an Ostrich Needs a Nest: Where Birds Begin by Irene Kelly
This book describes the many, many types of nests used by different birds, including birds who build cups, mounds, balls, or baskets, those who next on ledges, and those who dig out burrows in ground or trees. Text on each page is divided into sections so that different paragraphs can be skipped as needed, which can easily shorten a long book for a young child.

🌿Rosa’s Birdfeeder Experiment by Jessica Spanyol
Rosa and friends use recycled materials to build a series of bird feeders to suit different kinds of birds. As they test out their feeders, they learn from mechanical failures and improve upon flaws in their designs. They also describe the physical qualities of different materials.

Bird Show by Susan Stockdale
This illustrated nonfiction book showcases the spectacular color and feather displays of the world’s fancies birds.

Love Is by Diane Adams (illustrated by Claire Keane)
This beautiful book describes the process of loving and letting go, following a little girl who patiently raises a lost duckling to adulthood and sends them off into the world. This book explores the grief in saying goodbye and the joy in reuniting, even temporarily.

Creative Art Opportunities

🪶Painting with feathers
🪶Painting with rolling eggs
🪶Collage with egg shapes
🪶Collage with feather confetti
🪶Collage with whole or partial feathers
🪶Collage with birdseed
🪶Color hard-boiled eggs with dot markers

Hands On Experiences

⛅️Wild Republic Audubon bird song plushies
⛅️Explore large ostrich feathers*
⛅️Explore goose feathers in a sensory bin*
⛅️Nest*
⛅️Egg shakers
⛅️Dye hard-boiled eggs (food coloring + vinegar or dot markers)
⛅️Balance eggs on spoons
⛅️Transfer bird seed between bowls with a spoon
⛅️Make a bird feeder using a pinecone, natural peanut butter (salt & sugar-free) and birdseed
🌿Fill up a birdfeeder with birdseed or suet
🌿Look for birds in the trees (try binoculars)
🌿Go for a walk and look for last year’s bird nests
🌿Twist twigs and grasses into a nest with your fingers
🌿Weave a circle of fallen branches into a large nest– be sure to leave a space to walk through or climb in!

*Please use commercial or homemade materials as wild feathers and nests may be protected by law

Songs to Sing and Learn

“Way Up in the Sky” – There are many versions of this song. I sing the one my parents woke us with as kids.

Way up in the sky
The parent birds fly
When down in the nest
The little birds rest
With a wing on the left
And a wing on the right
The baby birds sleep all through the night
The bright sun comes up. The dew goes away
“Good morning, good morning” the little birds say

“A Minnesota Garden” Birds verse – Adapted from English folk song “Country Gardens”

What kind of wild birds fly to and fro in a Minnesota garden?
We’ll tell you now of some that we know–those we miss you’re sure to pardon:
Robin, wren, and oriole,
Mourning dove and cardinal,
Bluebird, blue jay, and cawing crow
There is joy in the spring when the birds begin to sing
In a Minnesota garden

“Little Bird, Little Bird” – Elizabeth Mitchell (excerpt)

Chickadee, chickadee
Fly through my window
Chickadee, chickadee
Fly through my window
Chickadee, chickadee
Fly through my window
Find molasses candy

Through my window
My sugar lump
Fly through my window
My sugar lump
And find molasses candy

“Two Little Blackbirds” – this simple chanting fingerplay comes from a nursery rhyme that’s changed a bit over more than two hundred years of telling

Two little blackbirds sitting on a wall
One named Peter, the other named Paul.
Fly away Peter! Fly away Paul!
Come back Peter! Come back Paul!

“5 Little Ducks” – There are many versions. I sing the one I first learned in kindergarten.

Five little ducks went out one day, over the hills and far away.
Mother duck said, “Quack, quack, quack, quack!”
But only four little ducks came back.

Four little ducks…
Three little ducks…
Two little ducks…
One little duck… but none of the five little ducks came back

Sad Mother duck went out one day… Over the hills and far away…
Mother duck said… “Quack… Quack… Quack… Quack…”
… And all of the five little ducks came back!

“I Love My Rooster” – I sing a bird-centric version the classic cumulative barnyard song during Birds week

I love my rooster. My rooster loves me.
And I feed my rooster on the green-berry tree
And my little rooster sings, “Cockadoodle-doo
Dee doodley-doodley-doodley-doo!”

I love my hen. My hen loves me.
And I feed my hen on the green-berry tree
And my little hen says, “Cluck. Cluck-cluck.”
And my little rooster sings “Cockadoodle-doo
Dee doodley-doodley-doodley-doo!”

[And so on until:]

I love my goose. My goose loves me.
And I feed my goose on the green-berry tree
And my little goose says, “… HOOooOnk!”
… And my little turkey says, “Gobble gobble gobble gobble!”
And my little ducklings say, “Peep peep peep peep!”
And my little duck says, “Quack! Quack-quack!”
And my little chicks say, “Cheep cheep cheep cheep!
And my little hen says, “Cluck. Cluck-cluck.”
And my little rooster sings “Cockadoodle-doo
Dee doodley-doodley-doodley-doo!”

NIYN – Birds on Spotify
All playlists are works in progress and are actively curated when I have a unit in play or preparation, so new songs may appear and old songs may be removed if they don’t suit my designs.