Unit Study....OWLS {whooo, whoooo}

photo via

When I discovered that you could purchase owl puke and dissect it, I knew that there would be an owl unit in our future.  Then when I got online and found that owls could quite possibly be the most fun and adorable animal on planet earth, I got busy!

We had so much fun these last few weeks studying Birds of Prey, or the raptor family, of which owls are a part.  I just had to share our study with you because it was so fun and is a perfect unit to sneak in right before Halloween!

So here is what we did:




First, I checked out every book in every children's section in a 50 mile radius about birds of prey.  I touched on hawks, eagles, falcons, and vultures during week one and then devoted week to exclusively to owls!  It went a little something like this....

Week One:

• Introduced birds of prey using DK's Eye Witness Birds of Pray and my other library books and Homeschool Share's lapbook study that you can download for FREE!!   I am a huge fan of Homeschool Share as well as lapbooks.  For a study like this, lapbooks just really send it on home.
• We also used Homeschool Share's suggested books for the beginning of our study as well.
• We read The Tale of Pale Male by Jeanette Winter about a red-tailed hawk in New York City.  It is a true story, and we enjoyed it.  

You would be so surprised how much information their is out there about these guys.  It took us all week to go through these birds without mentioning owls.

Week Two

• This week we started with our library books.  Some of our favorites were:
• Owls by Michael George
• Owls Whoo Are They?  by Kila Jarvis and Denver Holt
• Animal Predators - Owls by Sandra Markle {great book, my favorite}
• Great Horned Owls by Doug Wechsler
• We watched the unbelievably amazingly wonderful movie OwlCam:  The Hidden World which is a documentary following 2 Barred Owls named Ward and June {how adorable is that} as they nest and raise their 3 owlets Emmett, Abigail, and Ernie.  This documentary is unreal and done so tastefully.  Nothing inappropriate, nothing gross, and nothing sad.  Perfect for kids and a must see!  This movie is available through Netflix {can I get a whoop whoop}.
• Our read alouds were Owl Babies by Martin Waddell that my 4th grader asked to read again and again.  It is such a sweet and cute book that is very young but so worthy!  And, we read the Owl and the Woodpecker by Brian Wildsmith which is also cute.
• We followed Lapbook Lessons' owl lapbook pretty closely and used Homeschool Share for what we couldn't find on Lapbook Lessons.  Both of these websites are great and chock full of resources!  
• We ended our week by dissecting owl pellets {aka owl puke} that you can read about here.  It was something that I just know my kids will remember forever.  We bought these owl pellets from School Aids, but you can visit the company here .  I am pretty sure you can order them right off their website and I must say that being the owl puke expert that I am, I have heard that you have to be careful with these companies because you may either get a "synthetic" pellet that is not REAL...HELLO!!! Or, even worse, you may get a pellet with NOTHING IN IT!!!  That would be horribly anti-climatic wouldn't you say???  Our pellets were full of skulls and bones.  One had 12 small skulls in it and the other had 5 larger ones in it.  The skulls are what you want {TMI...yes I know, but bear with me} because without a skull its no fun...sorry that is just the truth.  Some owls eat caterpillars, insects, and snakes which would leave you empty handed, well I guess not really empty handed, you would still have a handful of owl puke {LOL}.  Anyway, this company has top quality owl puke!!  And they aren't paying me a red cent to say that, but if they would like to I would take it in a flash!

I really think you would love this study and your kids...I know would!!  We had a blast!  Feel free to email me or comment me with any questions and I will be happy to help you if I can!!

Happy Homeschooling!!!