Living Root Garden School • Creatures Great & Small • Name: ______________________
🔍 The Case
The case of the morning racket — something red, something blue, and something tiny with a giant song are all arguing in the yard. Learn their names.
Learn the neighbors by sight and sound: a male northern cardinal is bright red all year and loves sunflower seeds; a blue jay is big, blue, and crested, and can copy a hawk's scream so well every other bird freezes; a mockingbird sings ten different songs in a row, copying other birds and even car alarms.
Listen for the tiny opera singer: a Carolina wren is barely bigger than your fist, but its song is a loud, rolling teakettle-teakettle-teakettle that sounds like it comes from a bird three times its size. Wrens eat insects and spiders and nest in the weirdest places — mailboxes, flowerpots, old shoes.
Watch how they eat: a downy woodpecker — the smallest woodpecker in North America — drums on trees and reaches insects with a super-long tongue, and a mourning dove eats seeds right off the ground, scatter some on bare dirt and doves will find it.
Remember what they need: food (most baby birds eat insects, even the ones that grow up to eat seeds), water in a shallow dish with a stone to stand on, shelter in dense shrubs, and no poison — if you spray the bugs, the birds lose their food.
Ask: Which bird will you see first from one sitting spot — the red flash, the loudmouth, or the tiny opera singer? Write your guess before you watch.
Try: Watch from one sitting spot for fifteen minutes, two days in a row, and log every bird — what it looked like, what it was doing, and what it was eating.
Stretch (Teens & Growers ready for more): Turn two weeks of watches into a bar chart, one bar per bird, and see which bird owns your yard.
Tell: Fill in the log below — date, what you saw, what surprised you — then finish this sentence in words or a labeled drawing: “The ___ visited most because ___.”
Date
What I saw
What surprised me
Date: ____/____/____
Date: ____/____/____
Date: ____/____/____
Date: ____/____/____
🛠️ Build It
Draw the bird you watched the longest, doing the thing it was doing — eating, singing, or showing off.
🗣️ Be the Teacher
Tell someone how to recognize your bird by its colors or its song — in your own words.
🏅 I can…
☐ I can name three birds in my yard by sight or by song.
Portfolio check
☐ Guide read
☐ Case solved
☐ Ask, Try, Tell done
☐ Build It filed: Bird watch log + one bird sketch
☐ Taught someone
☐ Badge earned: I can name three birds in my yard by sight or by song.
Living Root Garden School • livingrootgarden.com/homeschool/ • Free — print as many copies as you like. File this sheet with your portfolio log. Sprouts do the Read, the Case, and Build It; Growers try the Ask, Try, Tell stretch when ready; Teens do the whole packet — including teaching it back.