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Bluebird Math

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Bluebirds of the Meadow Unit Study Math Activities

The bluebirds are busy building nests, laying eggs and helping young children learn all about math. Help the bluebirds find their birdhouses using one to one correspondence. Add and subtract bluebirds on the Bluebird MathMats. Make your own Bluebirds from Lima Beans and use them to discover mathematical concepts.

The basis of all math is discovering and describing pattens found in the natural world. This lens offers dozens of math activities, workjobs and centers for teaching math with a bluebird theme.

Bluebirds nest on the Edge of Garner Rix's Field

Bluebirds of the Meadow Unit Study

At our home in Vermont we have set out bluebird houses all along the edge of the field that Garner Rix cleared over 200 years ago. When we sit on the porch we watch them flying in and out of the bird houses building nests in preparation for laying eggs and raising their young chicks.

Sometimes they perch on top of the bluebird houses watching for insects. They fly through the air, grab an insect in their bills and fly back to feed their babies.

Photo Credit: My son sitting in front of our
Royalton Bed and Breakfast in Vermont


Rather than tell children to stop looking out the window and pay attention to their workbooks, I encourage children to look outside in order to encourage more enthusiasm for learning.

The Bluebirds of the Meadow Unit Study describes activities that teach children all across the curriculum.

This lens will focus on Bluebirds and Math.

Bluebird Pattern Workjob

Pattern Activity from the Bluebirds of the Meadow Unit Study

Hands-on MathBird Magnet Board
Use these little birds to make patterns or math problems on the Bluebird Magnet Board. I have index cards and markers for the children to make up math problems for their friends. They put the answers on the back for self checking.

Look for more great ideas in Mathematics Their Way.


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Bluebird Math Mats

Lima Bean Math Manipulatives

You can paint Lima Beans to resemble bluebirds on one side and eggs on the other to use as math manipulatives.

Put the Eggs in the Nests

One to One Correspondence

Eggs in the nest

Photo Credit: Bluebird Eggs
on Flickr, Creative Commons.



1. Spray paint the Lima Beans with baby blue paint.

2.Use a fine tipped permanent marker to to draw the features of a bluebird on one side of the Lima Beans.

3. Make a nest from brown and tan felt.

4. Make a hollow tree from gray felt and glue it onto the left side of a green math mat.

5. Glue the nest in the hollow of the treetrunk.

Children place 5 eggs in the nest.

Line up a paper under the math mat so that the children can fill in the number sentences.

5 eggs in the nest 0 baby bluebirds hatched.

5-0=5

Tell the children that one baby bluebird has hatched. (Turn over one egg)

4 eggs in the nest. 1 baby bluebird hatched.

5-1=4

etc.

Then you can have the baby bluebirds fledge by having them one my one fly out into the meadow.

After playing this game several times, children can start to make up their own math problems with the birds and eggs. You can also turn these into class books for reading during silent reading time.
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Bluebird with a Blueberry

Photo Credit: Bluebird with a Blueberry
from The Graphics Fairy.

Bluebird Unit Study Math

Math can easily be included within a unit study about bluebirds.

Bluebird and Bluebird House Patterns

Bluebird Math

Photo Credit: Bluebird Birdhouseon Flickr, Creative Commons.
Photo Credit: Bluebird in the Public Domain.



When watching the bluebirds fly into the birdhouses with bits of grass to make a nest, one of my children suggested that we make a bluebird and bluebird house pattern.

1. We talked about how our pattern is an ABAB pattern.

2. Later on we used this pattern to Skip Count the birds and birdhouse by 2's.

3.How Many Eggs Will a Female Lay? For those children working on functions, we learned that most bluebirds lay 4-7 eggs. For every pair of parents that go into the bluebird house and lay eggs, assuming that no birds die, how many birds will that produce? How many bluebirds will there be the next year? How many bluebirds will there be in 5 or 10 years.

By looking for patterns in bluebird populations children can work on Bluebird math at many different levels making this Bluebird Unit Study Math ideal for multiage classes, classes with mixed abilities or homeschooling families.

Bird related Math Mats

Math Mats / Cover Up Games
Pdf files of themed pictures that can be used to cover with math manipulatives. These are sheets of 25 pictures on a 5X5 grid.

Math mats can also be used to practice letters, sight words, punctuation marks, etc.

To make patterns, Print and laminate the two sheets, nests and birds, cut apart and arrange them in patterns.

You can make extra copies of these sheets, cut them apart and show children how to record the patterns they have made by gluing a pattern series in their Bluebird Math Journals.
Birds Cover Up Game
Bird on a branch Math Mat
Nest Cover Up Game
Nests with one egg Math Mat
Math Patterns using Lima Beans
Little Giraffes Teaching Ideas

Dye seasonal macaroni, paint lima beans or use math manipulatives for patterning, counting sets, graphing or acting out story problems. I store individual sets of manipulatives in film containers. Then I place the thematic sets (story boards and manipulatives) in plastic shoe boxes so they are always ready to use. The math mats are Box It or Bag It's Storyboards.
Calendar Math
Bluebirds look for insects out in Garner Rix's Meadow. This link offers suggestions for making calendar math patterns using an insect theme.

Bluebird Calendar

Bluebird Unit Study Calendar Time

I created this bluebird math calendar with my children. Which picture will come next in the pattern? Will it be a bluebird? Will it be a bluebird house? Recognizing repeated patterns is a fundamental basis for understanding all mathematics. How could you and your children create a pattern for your calendar using a bluebird theme? Would you use bluebird eggs and nests?

Bluebird Calendar Math

Bluebird Unit Study Calendar

You can use the bluebird cookie cutter to trace bluebird shapes to create patterns on the Bluebird Calendar. Invite children to guess each day what the next picture will be in the pattern.
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Bluebird, bluebird, through my window.

Finding Mathematical Patterns in Music

Look at the BluebirdBluebird, bluebird, through my window.
Bluebird, bluebird, through my window.
Bluebird, bluebird, through my window.
Oh, Johnny, I am tired.

Redbird, redbird, through my window.
Redbird, redbird, through my window.
Redbird, redbird, through my window.
Oh, Johnny, I am tired.

Yellowbird, yellowbird, through my window.
Yellowbird, yellowbird, through my window.
Yellowbird, yellowbird, through my window.
Oh, Johnny, I am tired.

Photo Credit: Song of the Bluebird
on Flickr, Creative Commons.


How could we use music from the Bluebird Unit Study to teach mathematical patterns?

1. Teach the song to the children and then look for the pattern in the verses. AAAB, CCCB, DDDB

2. If you wanted to make a flannel board scene to show the birds in this song how many birds would you need? (3X3=9)

3. It you continued the pattern how might the next verse go?
Children's Music by Nancy Stewart - Song of the Month
This very simple traditional song is magical in its ability to connect with children.

Bluebird Math Workjob

Bluebird Math Mats

Design For Playbill For The Bluebird, 1909

Design For Playbill For The Bluebird, 1909
Robinson
Buy at AllPosters.com



Paint the box to resemble a bluebird house. The green placemat is the grass.
1. Put 5 bluebirds in the birdhouse and place the birdhouse on the grass.
2. One bluebird flies out into the meadow to look for insects.
3. Five bluebirds minus 1 bluebirds leaves 4 bluebirds in the bluebird house.
Write: 5-1=4

Continue until there are no more bluebirds in the bluebird house.
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Bluebirds represent Large Numbers

Bluebird Math and Social Studies

Each bluebird tattooed to a sailor's chest represented 5,000 nautical miles. How far has this sailor traveled? Can you find any ports on a globe that are 10,000 nautical miles apart?

Gr. 1-2 For younger children we look up the information together and fill in the blanks on a sailor worksheet.

Gr.3+ Challenge children to find ports that are 5000 or more nautical miles apart. They can write about their sailor's voyage on the back and share the story during Writing Workshop.

Bluebird Tattoos

Using Graphic Designs to Count by 5000's

Bluebird DesignSailor

Photo Credit: Bluebird Tattoo on Flickr, Creative Commons.
Photo Credit: Sailor on Flickr, Creative Commons.

Bluebirds and the History of Tattoos
Images of bluebirds inked on the chest were often used to mark the number of miles a sailor had spent a sea. Each bluebird represented 5,000 miles logged at sea.

1. Print coloring pages of a sailor with large, muscled arms for adding tattoos.

2. Children look on the globe for places that they would like to sail to.

3. They write the two destinations and then find the distance between the two points.

4. Finally they stamp the sailor's arm with a bluebird stamp for each 5000 miles he would have traveled between ports.
Popeye the Sailor Man Coloring Page
This picture shows a large, muscled arm for adding tattoos.

More Lenses from the Bluebird Unit Study

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Come Visit the Bluebirds in Vermont!

Come Visit Vermont!

Driving in Vermont

Photo Credit: Vermont Dirt Road
on Flickr, Creative Commons.

Drive the scenic roads of Vermont North and South on Route 100. Then travel east and west over Lincoln Gap and come back over Appalachian Gap. Take the dirt roads where the trees still grow over the road forming a green canopy. And when you are done come back to Evelyn's Royalton B&B for the night.
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Bluebird Math Chat

Count all the ways that you can integrate math into your unit study about bluebirds.

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About the Author of this Bluebird Math Unit Study Lens!

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Bluebird Math in the Kingdom!

Let's write about Bluebirds!

Now that you have played some games and learned some math using a bluebird theme, it is time to share your experiences. Take some pictures of the games you and your children have played. Show how using the bluebird theme has made learning fun for your children. Write an article about bluebird math on Wizzley or Squidoo and then add it to the Kingdom of Squid. Come write about bluebird math.



Come write about bluebirds on Wizzley, a fun and easy place to express your opinion:
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by

Evelyn_Saenz

My passion is teaching and finding ways to teach children in fun, hands-on, creative ways. The unit studies I make on Squidoo reflect my view that learning... more »

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