"Professional" Help

I've talked about inspiration coming from different sources: another blog or a spontaneous idea popping up from a child-selected book.

I'm also enjoying finding directed inspiration from curriculum.  Sometimes it's nice to just open up the book and do what it says to do!

I grew up using KONOS (from 3rd grade-highschool) and LOVED it.  It was such a fun, natural way to learn and really helped prepare me not only for college, but also life-long learning. 

Much of what we've done over the last several years has been inspired by the hands-on unit-study based approach in KONOS.  But we "officially" dug in this last January. 

I have to say that it is so nice to have a game-plan that I didn't have to create.  As we wrapped up our study of birds last week, it was so nice to just open up the book and collect materials for an incredible beak experiement!

Check out our 'beak' specimens!

We had been reading about different kinds of birds and what they eat.  I first set out sunflower seeds and had them select which style of beak would be best for eating seeds!

The small, but precise beak proved easiest for obtaining seeds!

Next, the boys imagined they were birds who ate water-borne insects...

Xander's little 'tweezer' beak just didn't quite cut it.  Keegan had the bright idea to try the sieve.  It was fun to review what we knew about flamingo beaks and marvel at how wonderfully each bird is designed!

As we continued with our experiment, they learned a lot about the importance of specialized beak structure.

A staw-like beak just doesn't cut it when trying to capture a snake.

And of course, one of their favorites: plucking worms out of the mud.

ewwww....

Yum.

...and Xander learned a hard lesson about incorrect beak structures, when Keegan landed more flying insects (aka marshmellows) with his 'scoop' beak.

He quickly remedied the lapse.

It's a good thing hummingbirds don't have strong, heavy beaks...

And so our super-easy, no thinking required, experiment came to an end.  I'm sold.  Curriculum is a wonderful thing!