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Getting Kids Interested in Birds and Nature
It’s easy to imagine that going for a bird walk would not appeal to screen-obsessed young people, but that isn’t necessarily true. It can be easy —and a whole lot of fun—to engage them in learning about birds and the natural world. Connecting them with the outdoors has many health benefits and helps them learn the importance of looking after our planet.

Whether you have bird boxes or feeders set up near a window or not, watching bird feeder cams is a great way to get up close to birds. The Cornell Lab has many bird feeder cams set up across the US; their Sapsucker Woods FeederWatch cam (in New York State) is a fun one to start with.

Bird Sleuth lessons are free lesson plans for grades K through 12 which can easily be incorporated into a classroom. In addition to science lesson plans for each grade level, there are educator guides and downloadable worksheets and activities. This is truly a wealth of resources for anyone to use, not just teachers.

The Feathered Friends: Bird of the Month resources introduce a variety of species to students while extending their learning about bird ecology and behavior.

Games and online activities such as Beast Box and Bird Song Hero are highly engaging, electronic learning opportunities in which users are invited to interact with various components of bird songs. For more ideas on bird-related games, read this review by one of our Talkin’ Birds Ambassadors about four more options.

National Audubon has a website full of activities for kids in English and Spanish. Check out Audubon Para Ninos for more

Encourage kids to write, whether they’re indoors or out. This activity can easily be adapted to whatever mode of writing they’re studying in school. Some ideas:

A description of a bird they’ve seen in the wild or in the zoo;

A report on their first bird watching experiences;

A nature journal, observing a bird or place in a natural environment;

A persuasive writing piece on what their favorite bird is and why;

An article assimilating their learning about birds; or

An imaginative story about a bird or someone looking for birds.

Fill kids’ book collections with books about birds and nature. Give them books you loved as a kid, or check out some of the books from our Book Nest segment, reviewed by children’s author Susan Edwards Richmond.

Recommended by kindergarten teacher and Talkin’ Birds Ambassador Christie Wyman, Every Day Birds by Amy Ludwig van DerWater has lovely pictures and a delightful poem about commonly-seen North American birds.

For kids aged 2-5, our friend Christa LeGrande-Rolls from Birding Tools recommends the books National Geographic Kids: Little Kids First Big Book of Birds and National Geographic Kids Look & Learn: Birds.

A fabulous book to read with young people about birds and conservation is Wildwings by Gill Lewis, which is about the discovery of an Osprey in Scotland and its migration over the course of a year. (A short review of the book can be found here.)

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