After our unsuccessful search for owl pellets last Friday, Panda Girl and her friend went exploring for some, under the same tree, on Saturday and found two fresh ones which must have been dropped in the night! Really exciting! And a bit gross.
We decided they were tawny owl pellets and after some great pulling apart and discussion and research we found out our tawny owl had eaten a mouse. Just brilliant.
We learnt that owls don't need speed like falcons, they are silent night hunters and so their feathers are jagged to allow the air to pass silently through. Also their wing size, relative to their body size, gives them lift with little effort. In experiments you can see the owls disturb very little of the air around them as they fly, allowing for quiet flight.
We used the thesaurus to help us write a simple owl poem with these thoughts in mind.
On muted wings like
Winter snow
Lawless Predator
Crossing back to our recent Canada project, the kiddies drew Inuit style owls.
Owl art in the garden
Looking for art related to the British garden
Hunting for wildflowers and grasses to take home and identify.
The Boy went hunting in the garden for different leaf shapes.
We talked about the word compound and how it means 'made up of different parts'.
And they learnt the idea behind this by using coffee filter paper to separate colours in felt tip pens.
These pens are not compound.
And these pens are.
Writing short stories about ponds.
Worksheets
Using paintbrushes made from natural things in the garden to paint Japanese blossom pictures.
Our seeds are sprouting.
The children chose to do pencil sketches of the tree while they watched a tractor cut the field.
Watching the red kites.
And we finished our month long project with some fun wooden spoon art which we used to make a teeny fence around the wilderness area of our garden.
Done! Half term now and a new project to follow.
I'd like to just take a moment to share the very first picture of Sunbaby doing her very first bit of official 'home school'. Welcome to our fun world, Sunbaby! I love you.
Sailing Regatta for Ballet Girl this weekend, and some downtime for us all over the break.
Back soon!
