I took time to make the following game board because I greatly love bird-watching and also love games. I invite you to view it. School teachers or parents might enjoy it as well.
I admit that our bird-watching is much better through having a bird-feeder in the back yard, which accounts for probably half of the species we have seen.
Each picture is of a bird or animal seen, heard or smelled in Newton Massachusetts in March 2020.
Options:
- Study it to learn the local birds and common mammals.
- Print it out and see if you can see five in a row, column or diagonal.
- See how many species you can see, hear or smell.
- Click on the links to listen to the sounds, and then listen for them outside.
- Print out the second page and see how many names you can remember.
- Have someone tell you a name, and see if you can find it on the second page.
- Try taking your own pictures or make your own recordings.
- Learn the differences between male and female books. Look at the Cardinals! How different is the male and female house sparrow? Which one is shown here?
- Use the embedded sounds to listen and learn, and then have someone else play them to see if you can identify them. How many can you guess correctly?
- If you play all of the sounds quickly in sequence and on a recurring loop, you can turn your room into a bird sanctuary with all the sounds going at once. See if you can recognize them as they a sung.
- These are mostly winter and year round birds just now. Soon arriving will be many migrants, including the red-wing blackbirds, kinglets, flycatchers, warblers, owls, hawks, ducks and geese. Then come the summer resident birds. See how many you can find on your own!
- I have personally seen 15 wild mammals in Newton MA. Can you think of what they might have been?
- Start your own life lists!
This blog is posted here.
Feel free to share with your friends. Some teachers might even want to use this.
My new COVID19 mantra of March 28, 2020:
Stay at home.
If needed, send out one person every three days to buy food. Wear a mask if you go out. It need not be perfect, but any mask or scarf is better than nothing when around other people.
Maintain 2 meter distance if you do go outside. Jogging is fine.
Wash hands and things you touch compulsively. Wear gloves of any kind when you go out to stores.
Stay connected online to stay socially connected. Don’t watch too many news broadcasts.
This at home quarantine may only have to last for two months if we continue the dance well.
Low cost antibody testing kits are rapidly becoming available and will greatly help the dance.
Randall P. Ellis, Ph.D.
Professor, Department of Economics, Boston University
ellisrp@bu.edu http://blogs.bu.edu/ellisrp/