Hummingbirds As Teachers
The Natural Learning Connection
Inviting hummingbirds to the garden to observe their aerial acrobatics and avian behaviors has the bonus of providing educational opportunities to develop a child's observation and language power, mathematical thinking and artistic expression.
Setting the Outdoor Instructional Stage
A hummingbird feeder and garden set the outdoor instructional stage.
Stock a clear plastic hummingbird feeder with a homemade mixture of 4 parts water to 1 part sugar. Have your preschooler stir the solution. Boil the mixture 2 minutes. Cool before pouring into the feeder. Hang the feeder where it may be easily observed.
Hummingbirds are attracted to brightly colored tubular flowers high in nectar. The following plants grown in hanging baskets or containers are hummingbird magnets: fuchsias, petunias, nasturtiums, scarlet sage, basket begonias, torenias, and impatiens.
Observation and Conversation
A clear plastic feeder affords visible evidence of changes due to actively feeding birds and introduces the child to events that build important concepts about nature. The child learns about ingredients, mixtures, and dissolving while stirring sugar into the water. In pouring sugar-water into the feeder, he experiences the first of several sequential events such as depletion and evaporation of the water and the visitation, retrieval, and return of the birds.
Assist the child in noticing change in nectar level by marking the water level on the feeder daily. When the feeder needs refilling, he can help replenish the supply, thereby learning to affect changes in his surroundings.
As birds appear, disappear, and reappear, use those words and others like “hovering,” “fly away,” and “return” to introduce and encourage vocabulary development in context.
The conversation shared at the feeder and flowers fosters language competence as parents expand and elaborate their child's vocabulary. Affirm the child's comment "sugar water" by responding: "Yes, the hummingbird is drinking sugar water" or "The sugar water is food and energy for the hummingbird." The parent provides an expanded syntax model and additional information about the hummingbird.
Observational Experiments
Speculative language like "What if" and "What happened" encourages observational experimentation. For example: "What if more than one hummingbird arrives at the feeder? " What if we use plain water?" "What happened when we moved the feeder to a new location?" "What happened when an empty feeder was left hanging?"
Mathematical Thinking
Activities involving one-to-one correspondence can be fostered by having the child tally visits to the feeder and flowers on a marker board placed in the viewing area. Design a tally to record which species of flower received the “most” or “fewest” visits.
The child could predict how many hummingbirds could dine at one feeder or plant at a time by counting port holes, flower faces or tubes.
Since hummingbirds feed from dawn to dusk, and, on average, every 10-15 minutes, a child can sequence events by keeping a hummingbird observation time clock corresponding to his activities during the day: “when I get up,” “after breakfast,” “at snacktime,” “before naptime,” and “at bedtime.” The curious toddler and parent will soon discover what hummingbirds do between feedings.
Artistic Expression
Physical activity and artistic expression are fundamental ways for young children to come to know their world. Toddlers can recreate hummingbird behaviors in finger ballets and shadow dances. Dancing and darting like a hummingbird, rowing one's arms like a hummingbird rows its wings, and chanting hummingbird words and sounds comes naturally to children. Making puppets and finger painting hummingbirds and their flowers assist the child in representing the surroundings.
Hummingbirds are the natural connection to an active learning environment for children.
Green Hummingbird
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