This past Tuesday, we read about birds, birds and MORE BIRDS. Of course, there’s nothing like reading a book about a baby bird who is learning how to fly. Joyce Dunbar’s classic, Baby Bird is a fantastic read for infants and toddlers, the illustrations are bright and bold with just a hint of the eccentric. The baby bird in the story makes a first attempt…”flop, flop, flop…” and falls! Baby bird eventually succeeds but not before he runs into a squirrel, a frog, and a scary cat! We had fun using our arms as wings as we flap, flap…flapped with baby bird in the story. We moved from learning how to fly to finding the right mommy in Whose Chick Are You? by Nancy Tafuri. Clear, colorful illustrations of the large white egg and the birds (a hen, a duck, a goose and a sparrow who don’t know whose egg it is) make this a wonderful choice for infants. The egg eventually cracks open to reveal a furry, grey baby chick, but that little chick doesn’t know who mommy is and hen, duck, goose and bird certainly don’t know! Finally a beautiful swan floats by and claims the baby chick as hers.
Older Toddlers are the perfect audience for Kevin Henkes’ book Birds. Beautifully illustrated and accomplished with elegant restraint, Henkes’ book captures the physical and behavioral characteristics of birds – their various colors, chirrupy songs and group behaviors, all brought to life through visual and verbal metaphors. He also touches on every child’s desire to fly like a bird. The little girl who peers at the birds through her window acknowledges she can only pretend to fly, but she is confident in her ability to sing like a bird. A wonderful ending.
We rounded things out with a So Smart video about pet sitting…of course one of the pets was a parrot. I asked the toddlers to identify which of the pets was a bird – the parrot, the rabbit or the hamster. I think the parrot won, although someone did vote for the rabbit. 🙂
Want to read about even more birds? Check out the following:
