“I found an empty nest! Can we keep it?” Owen’s joyful discovery captures everyone’s attention.

Three-year-old Avery comes running. “Are there eggs?” she asks her older and wiser five-year-old friend. “Can I see?” she begs. “Please let me see?”

“There are no eggs, just an old nest. Can we please keep it?” pleads Owen.

After a quick glance to confirm that the nest cradled in Owen’s hands is not harboring a feathered inhabitant, I grant my permission.

Owen handles the nest gingerly before realizing that it is sturdier than it looks. After a few tugs and a few moments of studying the nest, he very gently hands it over to the others.

We have a collection of nests. We love to study the materials used to build each nest, as well as the nest construction methods used by different local bird species.

We also try to guess the type of bird that built each nest and how many eggs might have been laid in these cozy homes crafted from sticks, grass, leaves, string, mud and other found objects.

I watch Ave silently investigating and collecting data as she turns the nest in one direction and then another. You can almost see the wheels turning.

“I think the bird used some litter [drinking straws, food wrappers and other debris] to build this nest.” Ave giggles. “And there are like a million sticks in here!”

“A million?” I echo.

“Maybe more!” Ave theorizes.

This moment gives me a valuable insight into Ave’s nascent number sense. Connecting numbers to quantities is a skill that will continue to emerge and evolve with age and brain development.

“The bird added string—and look at this piece of wire she wove in!” shares Maya. “It’s lightweight but very strong. How long does it take her to make this nest? I think this nest is smaller than the others we have.”

This is how we set our curriculum for the day—by following the interests of the children. When we return to our indoor classroom, we will dig out our books to learn more about the various engineering practices that local birds use to build their homes and compare this newest nest to the others in our collection.

Living along the Mississippi River as we do, we are blessed with the return of our beloved bald eagles each winter and spring. From December to March, these magnificent birds migrate south from Canada and often make our area their winter home. Some even like it so much that they make it their permanent home.

In the fall and winter, the eagles rebuild their nests to prepare for the hatching of the eaglets. Eagles nesting in our area typically lay their eggs in mid-to-late February, and the eggs hatch by mid-to-late March.

Once the eggs have hatched, the female stays with the eaglets while the male leaves to find food for the female and her hatchlings.

The eaglets grow quickly and are ready to fly—or “fledge”—by late May or early June. A number of webcams have been set up by organizations in the area so that we can watch the life cycle of the eagles playing out before our eyes.

This is where I struggle. We are a screen-free environment. I know that we can link to so much learning with technology. I know that I need to stop being so stubborn. I am that old-school playground leader who hasn’t embraced the many educational benefits of 21st-century technologies.

We weren’t always screen-free—and I have fond memories of the year when we observed a wee bit of eagle life via webcam.

I hated the screen, but I loved learning about our local eagles. When an eagle brought a large fish to the nest, we were spellbound. But the fact that we’d been sucked into spending time staring at a screen contradicted everything that I believed in regarding early education—and I was overcome with guilt.

So when the first warm day of spring arrived, we created our own eagle’s nest in the center’s outdoor play area.

“Declan, how big is an eagle’s nest?” I asked, measuring tape in hand.

“Seven feet wide,” he responded. “What are you doing?”

I quickly measured out seven feet and put a heavy rock from the rain garden on the spot. The children began adding rocks until we had a circle that was seven feet in diameter.

For a few minutes, the children pretended to be eagles living in a happy little rock nest—until one perspicacious preschooler called me out.

“Wait! This isn’t a nest!” Asa declared. “We need to add sticks and leaves and yarn. We need more!”

“We do need branches and sticks!” agreed four-year-old Joshua.

“Over here!” directed two-year-old Gabe.

Game on! Now we were learning, creating and analyzing. We’d taken what we’d learned during our screen time and translated it into real-life, hands-on learning that met so many of the math and science standards that they would struggled to achieve on a worksheet!

This was when we grabbed our books and discovered that an eagle has a wingspan of 6-8 feet. We also learned that a mature eagle has 7,000 feathers, weighs 8-11 pounds and has vision so keen that it can see the print on a newspaper at a distance equal to the length of a football field. These are the details that young children are likely to absorb.

Because bald eagles are most active from sunrise to 11 a.m. as they feed along the open water of our locks and dams, this coincides quite well with our outdoor times. Lucky for us, they return to their roosting areas in the afternoon hours.

After lunch, some time spent browsing through eagle books and a nap, the boys made their way back out to their new eagle’s nest. If they build it, they will play in it. They had been playing there for a good long time when, sure enough, up in the sky, an eagle appeared!

Yes, a  real live eagle! Would she think this was HER nest? Could she see the boys in HER nest?

As the boys contemplated the possibility of the eagle swooping down and landing amongst them, they scrambled out of their nest in pure terror.

The eagle did not land in our nest. But, sadly, our frightened little learners never returned. I left the nest in place for over a week, and some of the younger children played in it, but the boys who built it kept their distance!

I often find that most of the fun is in the building phase of the project. The collaborating, creating, adding, subtracting, analyzing and evaluating with friends is actually the play for building kids. This is the good stuff that happens with play; enough time to engage in deep, investigative learning; and, sometimes, just the right amount of technology.

Take time to follow the lead of your students and see where their interests and curiosity take you. Then match their learning up with your early learning standards.

This link will take you to the Arconic Eagle Cam.

Full disclosure: The male eagle will bring food back to the nest. This could be a raccoon, a fish or a mouse. It is nature. It is graphic. It can be addicting or terribly uneventful at any given moment!

When we build nests of our own, we often use this Scientific American site as a reference. But if you’ve lingered too long on the Arconic Eagle Cam link provided above and feel guilty about overdoing the screen time, you can just WING it—pun intended!

Ha! Let’s get outside and play.

In order to seize the “teachable moment” we need to be prepared.  If a child runs up to you with an earthworm she has dug up and she wants to measure it, it’s never going to happen if you have to go back inside the building to find a tape measure or ruler.  Although we can’t be prepared for every hypothetical math opportunity, we can maximize our chances by creating this math kit, and adding to it, as needed.

First, find a small to medium-sized backpack.  It doesn’t have to be pretty or new.  Pull one out of the old lost and found bin and use that. Label it in some way, so it is clear that it goes outside with the group and that it is for math (and science) opportunities.

Now, fill it with supplies.  This is a short list of the items I would choose, but if you have additional ideas, please put them in the comments section.

2 small tape measure

2 small rulers (or full-sized rulers)

a small bucket balance

several small, lined notebooks

pencils 

a camera (if you dot have a spare that can be left in the bag, be sure to bring a phone with a camera, or the classroom camera.)

markers

 

small thermometer (This is an analog thermometer.  You may want a digital one.)

 

 

 

 

small field guide to birds (I like this edition.  It is designed for young bird watchers and costs $4.95)

and a small field guide to insects and spiders

Here are some ideas of how to use the Math Kit with the children.

Before bringing it outside, introduce the kit to the children during group time.  Take out each of the items and let the children explore them by passing them around the group.  Allow them to ask questions.  Once you gather the supplies back together, explain that the bag will be accompanying the group outside and the children can use them whenever they want.  You can then go through each item, one by one, and provide concrete examples for how they might be used.  Ask the children for their ideas as they will probably think of things that you never even considered.

I would imagine that depending on where you live, there are ample opportunities to look for birds and bugs in the great outdoors.  Even if you have a small outdoor space, there are probably places to dig and explore.  You probably have a few children who Howard Gardner would categorize as having a Naturalistic Intelligence.  People who are nature smart, have a strong affinity for the outdoors and are very interested in human and animal behaviors.  These children may know where to find bugs even when you don’t.  You can support these observations by using the field guide books to help in identifying the species and the names.  Encourage the children to draw pictures of what they find, take pictures of the bugs or birds, and then help the children think of ways to document their experiences.  Keeping records of their discoveries is a great way to encourage early math skills. Have the children keep count of how many they have found using tally marks, and then how many of each species.  That way they need to think of sets and subsets.  They can sort their categories by attributes (brown birds, red birds, small birds, big birds).  This will also encourage them to categorize their discoveries as they look for similarities and differences.

Use the outdoor thermometer to chart the temperature.  Begin using the thermometer simply.  Have the children look at the gauge and show them how to read the temperature.  Older children will have an easier time with this.  For younger children, you can use permanent markers to show where the “hot,” “warm,” “cool,” and “cold” ranges are.  That way, if they can’t yet read the thermometer, they can tell the range of the temperature.  Keep a daily record of the temperature in one to the little notebooks.

Use the tape measures and the rulers to measure all sorts of outdoor stuff.  Encourage the children to use these tools whenever an opportunity arises.  You may have to remind them that you have these tools in the math backpack and suggest some measurement ideas from time to time.  It might be fun to bring out a longer tape measure and try to measure things like how high the children swing, or how far they can jump. Make accurate records of these measurements in the notebooks and help the children compare the numbers.  Who jumped the furthest?  Who swung the highest?

What other ideas do you have for your Outdoor Math Kit?  Send them along!  See you on the playground.