What a fantastic Feathers class we had yesterday!! The lovely Sal brought along her real live feathered friend to meet us :) Our Kindermusik Village class thought La La was just wonderful - especially when he came out of his house & sat on Sal's shoulder.
Birds are nature's most wonderful music makers - and La La very happily joined in when we sang our songs. It was a shame poor Jarvis wasn't feeling well and was exiled from the class (and went on an outing with his Dad!), he loves echoing La La's squeals!
Echoing interesting sounds and exploring what their voices can do is a great language acquisition tool for our small friends, by listening and experimenting they learn how to use their mouths in different ways to make different sounds, a very important precursor to using real words. So, spending some time with the birds is a very useful way to spend an afternoon!
There are lots of ways of encouraging lovely wildlife to come and sing to you - and one of these is to leave them something tasty to eat! Try this recipe out - it's from the NZ Forest & Bird website :)
Bird Pudding...
1 - 2 cups of fat
Crumbled up stale bread, biscuits or birdseed
Honey
Bacon Rinds
Place the fat, honey and bacon rinds in a bowl. Stand in another bowl filled with boiling water. When the fat begins to melt, add the crumbs or birdseed. Stir the mixture to combine, and squish into a ball shape. When it's cooled down, put your bird pudding ball into a mesh bag (like the ones you buy onions in!), and hang it in a tree. You can also put out a tasty drink for your feathered visitors - they love sweetened water! Make sure you put it all up high enough that any passing cats don't interrupt the party :)
We're inviting our native birds into our Kindermusik classroom as well as into our garden - the class created a very cool version of 'Who's Making All that Noise' this week. I'm looking forward to seeing what we can come up with next week!
Musically yours,
Kath :)
PS...Jarvis missed his friends terribly this week - hopefully he'll be back on board next Tuesday!
Ooooh, I'll have get the bacon rinds back out of the freezer (awaiting rubbish day there)and try the recipe!
ReplyDeleteHope Jarvis is better real quick x
Awesome Jacquie I also have a tin of rendered pork fat(gross) that I thought I would never ever use but what a great idea!!
ReplyDeleteWonderful!! Make sure you take pictures of your bird party ;)
ReplyDeleteWhat a great idea!! Can't wait to try it. we will have to have roast tonight. It's proberbly best if you don't use honey as it spreads disease, try sugar instead.
ReplyDeleteGood thinking there, Becca. I hadn't thought of that (and forest & bird mustn't have either!)
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