birdsongs

By Betsy Franco and Steve Jenkins

I have a very active and precocious 4 year-old. If she is left with too much unstructured time, mayhem ensues. In order to combat this, I have taken to planning various activities at the start of the week. I also have a very active 15 month-old, so I have to plan these things and gather the supplies beforehand so I can just whip them out at strategic intervals in order to ward off chaos and destruction. Being a book nerd, I like to have books to supplement and support these activities. One of the things we did this week was to watch birds at our bird feeder (a favorite activity, as is evidenced by the quantity of face and finger prints on the window by the feeder...) and look up each bird in an old book I got from my parents. My 15 month-old pointed to each bird and shouted "quack, quack, quack!" and my 4 year-old got so interested in looking things up that she eventually abandoned the birds and looked through the entire Reader's Digest Guide to North American Wildlife (which is actually pretty cool). In both cases, I deem it a success.
I've read birdsongs to my oldest several times before and thought of it again as I was preparing the above activity. I love Jenkins's illustrations (I wonder if I am supposed to use a different word for them since they are made out of paper instead of drawn or painted?) and have read many of his books to my daughter. I am continually astounded by the intricacy and variations achieved by laying little bits of paper on top of one another. The story is great too--it exposes children to different birds, what they look like, and their calls (this part also provides a fun opportunity for some spirited reading aloud!). It also involves counting and ties it all together with a simple story of a day passing. In the back of the book there are some great facts about each species of bird mentioned. My daughter is always asking me if we can "check up on the computer" about various random topics, and this book provides a great starting point for such explorations. It was also a great supplement to our little birdwatching endeavor.