Burgess Bird Book Study Guide

Christmas was awesome.  I loved having a break – and have really enjoyed our new traditions.  What I liked the most was the wonderful spirit that was invited to our home every evening as we sat down to read the scriptures and enjoy the Advent countdown we chose to do.  I am sad that it is over, but the tradition carries on in our daily family devotionals.

Now it is time for a new year and a new beginning.  I have spent the last couple of days evaluating our progress, re-vamping our focus, and preparing new studies.  Yippie!! =)

My friend had a new baby on Christmas day and she asked me to help her locate somethings her young kiddos can do for school that will allow them to be independent as possible and still have them be learning.  So this was what I came up with for Science/Nature Study.

I created a short and sweet study guide to The Burgess Bird Book for Children.  The chapters are short, engaging, and full of information.  And as usual, we have both the printed book and the audio versions.  To allow for the various learning styles and ages of my children I included some nature journaling type coloring pages and regular coloring pages.  I found the original artwork in the book online, so I gathered that together.  I also located some bird identification cards (designed Montessori-style) that we will use for review games.  I am really excited to do this now!  I love listening, but having visual, audio and kinetic things really gets me going, lol.

So here’s my plan using my Study Guide with all my additional (if desired!) websites for further information. You can download that here: The Burgess Bird Book Study Guide

1.  Listen to the story – I made CD’s from the free audio recordings here.

2.  Display the beautiful picture from the original artist, Louis Agassiz Fuertes.  I put them in PDF format with the chapter at the top and the information from the book at the bottom.   You can download the PDF for free here: The Burgess Bird Book Illustrations.

3.  Give the kids their coloring/journaling pages for each bird introduced in the chapter.  Usually there are two.  You can download the coloring pages free PDF here: Burgess Bird Book Coloring Pages

4. Use these fun little cards from thatresourcesite.com  (type in Burgess Bird Book – there are lots of things for that, including the 9 sets of bird cards).  They are all the illustrations made into Montessori -style cards and they are free.  I printed them  on light cardstock, cut them out, and laminated them.  We will use these for games  like memory and guess who?  You can download those files here: ETA:  thatresourcesite.com has had to go to paid memberships in order to offer their collection of downloads due to licensing issues, so the cards are no longer available as free PDF’s from this blog. You may still access them by purchasing a VERY inexpensive yearly membership fee to thatresourcesite.com. They offer very nice downloads for nature study, music study, and more.

I listed other resources such as The Handbook of Nature Study should we want to take any subject further.  After I gathered all this stuff, I am excited to use it! Now I am working on the Burgess Animal Book and want to do one for the Seashore as well.