Michael wrote:I was thinking more along the lines of talking about what color the bird is, what feathers are, and how many toes it has. The stuff you mentioned sounded more like a graduate course on ornithology
Ha! You don't have much experience with small children, do you, Michael? You would be surprised at the stuff they know and ask about! I used to give chats in a private Brazilian preK school in Manhattan and they would ask the most amazing questions... like how many taste buds parrots have versus how many we do (just in case they do ask, parrots have between 300 and 400, while we have about 10,000 but the parrots' are not on their tongue -as most of ours are- most of theirs are at the back of the throat and that's why they can eat super spicy stuff - you can also say that just because we have so many more, it doesn't mean we are better because, for example, catfish can have as many as 175,000 and not only in their mouths but all over their bodies). How many feathers and how they grow: from 1,500 to 25,000 depending on the species, cold climate ones have more feathers but all of them have around 1/3 of their feathers on their head and neck - and they grow from follicles, just like human hair, but they come out in a sheath with blood vessels and, when they are fully grown, the blood vessels dry up, as well as the sheath and the bird preens it off). Talking to them about the different types and the structure of feathers is always a hit with them. I had drawn giant feathers on a construction sheet and would show them the different kinds and parts of them. Here it's a good resource: http://www.kidwings.com/bodyparts/feathers/index.htm
Also, ask them not to shout, run around or wave their arms too close to her so as not to scare her (you don't want her panicking and hurting herself).
Ah, another thing I used to do is make sheets to give one to each kid with a picture, in color, of a different species of psittacine and with a little text with the name of the species, where they come from and something special about them (like that quakers are the only bird in the entire world that makes and lives all year round in a communal nest where their entire family lives - or that the real name of the parakeet is budgerigar which, in the language of the people of Australia, means 'good eating' - or that the romans used to keep Alexandrines as pets and that they called them so because it was Alexander the Great who brought them back when he went to Asia - or that Hyacinths are the largest of all the parrots and measure over 3 ft from head to tail - or that the Spix macaw, like the one in the movie Rio, doesn't exist in the wild anymore but that people are trying to breed them so they can release them in the Brazilian jungles - or that conures eat laying on their back when they are babies in the nest, that kind of thing)
