Wildlife Conservation

For this week’s lesson, we brought in some bird artifacts such as feathers, eggs, skulls, nest, wings, etc from the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge to teach the student at Towey how to identify different species of birds, how they migrate, their habitat, etc. We started off by seeing what they knew about birds in general. After talking about the different types of bird feet, we shifted our focus on the main portion of this lesson which was ducks. The key points to identify a duck is from the beak, the webbing on its feet, the colors, feather design, and most importantly, male ducks are known as Drakes while female ducks are Hens. After a demonstration, we had the students draw a duck in a pond in order to enter their work in a contest held by the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge for the junior duck stamp design. All of the funds are going toward preserving the wildlife and fish life habitat. What I like about this project is that their making art for a good cause while learning science. One thing I was fascinated by the birds nest and eggs because there are subtle differences you won’t noticed at a first glance.