Photo from yesterday’s field trip.

Today we covered a few things I had not gotten to in the last few days.  Papa sent us a couple of sites so we read more about birds and, specifically, owls.  Plus we read a bit about a newfound dinosaur in the evolutionary path of a bird.  I tried to explain evolution to Doo but it seemed a bit mind boggling for a 4 year old to grasp. I do think that the pictures of bird and human evolution helped some, though.

We also made an owl out of paper plates.  Doo needs more practice with scissors and we teamed up for the stapling.

Today the family went on a rainy day field trip to the Natural History Museum here in LA.  We specifically went to enjoy their Hall of Birds since we’ve been talking about birds, specifically owls, this past week.

There was a lot to see and do in the Hall of Birds.

Listening to various bird calls.

Doo weighing her bones.

Watching a bird’s body change in flight.

Clicking to see which bird ate what food.

Urban birds plus birds in popular culture (Big Bird, Woody Woodpecker, etc.)

California Condors enjoying a little snack.

Ancient avian art.

Hoot!

Yesterday’s lesson coming to “life” – a barn owl gobbling up a rodent.

Snowy Owl.

Great Horned Owl, like in Owl Moon.

Daddy and Doo checking out drawers full of birds, information, etc…

Doo was excited to find a drawer full of bird heads.

A “marsh” that changed between day time and nighttime.

A Great Horned owl in the marsh.

We also explored other parts of the museum – like the cool Dino Lab where we watched a paleontologist at work.

We checked out many animal displays plus saw part of a dinosaur “puppet” show.

Checking out one of Papa’s favorite animals.

Hi Papa!

A lion having a snack.

A hyena having a snack.

Little Paleontologist.

We checked out many critters behind glass.

Python skeleton.

Members loaning area – you can actually borrow animals to take home!

I couldn’t get a good shot of this one – it’s wild life in an urban area.  That’s a house cat in the coyote’s mouth!

At the end of our visit I surprised Doo with a stuffed animal cardinal.  You press its back and it makes an authentic cardinal bird call.  Our bird call book included a cardinal so she was familiar with the bird and its call already.

Friday I had the day off from work (woot!) so we were able to spend a long time learning about owls.

We checked out:

Owl photos and their calls.

A handwriting sheet featuring an owl.

An online owl puzzle.

An owl catching its prey.

But, best of all, we dissected our very own owl pellet.  Owls gobble up their entire dinner and then, a few hours later, throw up whatever they do not digest.  Tasty!

So we got to dissect a barn owl’s pellet to see what the little guy ate.

Lookin’ good!

We had a plate for the pellet, one for the “trash” (fur, etc) and another for the bones.

Our “best” bone – a skull of a rodent.

We appeared to have the remains of a little rodent.  Delicious meal, Mr. Barn Owl.

We also had Doo’s pen pal’s card on display.  Satori had made an owl card when she rowed Owl Moon a few months ago and Doo was the lucky recipient!  I kept it safe so we would have it for our owl pellet dissection as well.  See below that the owl is ready to share his owl pellet with the world.

Post-dissection, we also took apart a virtual owl pellet.  One more tasty rodent remains added to our day.

Inspired by Alicia’s post, here’s a map showing all the states Doo has been to in her short life.  All thanks to the awesome cross country trip we took when she was 4 months old (it was great! Can’t wait to have the time and $ to do it again.)

visited 25 states (50%)
Create your own visited map of The United States

In Owl Moon, Pa calls out a Great Horned Owl bird call to locate and attract the interest of an owl.  I ordered us Bird Calls from Amazon and it arrived today.  Doo had fun pressing the buttons to hear each bird call and we read the birds’ descriptions.

The birds in the book are:

American Robin

Killdeer

Barred Owl

Eastern Towhee

Northern Cardinal

Black-Capped Chickadee

Red-Winged Blackbird

Northern Bobwhite

Today we started rowing Owl Moon.  This is a story about a child (it was hard to tell if the child was a boy or a girl) who goes owling with her father for the first time.  They walk through the woods on a cold, wintry night and her father calls out an owl bird call to attract the attention of a Great Horned Owl.  They eventually get to hear and see one before they head home.

(An aside, Doo just read the above paragraph to me with barely any help – her reading is coming along really nicely!)

The moon is full in the story so we had a little lesson about the moon and its phases after our reading.  We looked at what the moon looks like on the outside and inside.  Doo learned about the first moon landing, as well.

In the story, the father is called “Pa”.  This made Doo very happy since Laura calls her dad “Pa” in the Little House series (we are currently reading the second book, Little House on the Prairie.)  Plus Laura lived in the woods in the first book and Owl Moon takes place in the woods.

Yesterday I bought a book on tide pools (specifically, West Coast tide pools) for our science lesson today.  We read through the majority of it (and skimmed what we didn’t read) to learn about mussels, anemones, hermit crabs, starfish, barnacles, etc…  Doo also enjoyed peering at the pictures up close with her new magnifying glass that I surprised her with from our trip to the sea center.

We also watched videos of tide pools from the Monterey Bay Aquarium and from YouTube.

We then started a few little books on tide pool creature facts but only got to the starfish one today.

Saturday we took a trip to Santa Barbara.  We wanted to see the low and high tide plus Doo was going to try mussels for the first time.  In Very Last First Time, Eva collected mussels for her dinner at the bottom of the sea.

First we hit the beach and explored along the sand during low tide.

Stearns Wharf.

We found many mussel shells along the beach.

She enjoyed climbing on this mini “cliff”.  She would stomp near the edge and watch the sand cave under her foot.  One time she even fell with it!

We then went to the Moby Dick Restaurant on Stearns Wharf for lunch.  We got mussels for an appetizer along with drawn butter.  Doo pretended she was Eva and I was Eva’s mom.

I am happy to say that Doo loved the mussels dipped in the butter.  Me too!

We then met up with Doo’s friend Loco and his family at the Ty Warner Sea Center which is also on the wharf.  The center had a couple pet tanks, a tide pool, aquariums, puppets, books and even a preserved bottlenose dolphin with its innards on display!

I forgot to ask what kind of shark she touched.  After some research, my best guess is that it was a leopard shark.

After the sea center we headed up along the coast to a little playground by the sea.  We then checked out high tide from up above.  Doo enjoyed watching the waves come crashing onto the rocks below.

After a week of rain it was a wonderful sunny day.  Doo had a great time exploring, learning and playing with her friend.

In Very Last First Time, Eva and her mother wear fur-hooded parkas, boots and mittens when going out to gather mussels.  We compared how they dressed to how we need to dress in the winter (Southern California here, so no fur-hooded anything!) and then discussed how we need to dress depending on the weather.

Doo then played several dressing for the weather games online:

Let’s Dress The Bear

Bobinogs Weather Dressing Game

Lecky Goes Outdoors

Dress Caillou

Dress Elmo For Fall

Doo then helped me list what clothes would be best for different types of weather and then circled clothes for Lecky the alien (see above game) as well.

Then we had to decide what to wear for today’s weather.  Southern California has had rain all week long (4 storms!) so Doo decided that rain boots, a rain jacket and warm clothes would be best.  We then headed down the street to the park and she had a blast getting EVERYTHING wet.

Eva, in Very Last First Time, is an Inuk girl who lives in Northern Canada.  We read a little bit online about the Inuit culture and also discussed the singular and plural forms of the word (plus that meant discussing what singular and plural even meant).

We also filled out a little info booklet about the Inuit and used Google to find most of the answers.