Nature Study: The Blue Jay and Baby Birds

Nature for the Very Young (by Maria Bowden) has wonderful sketches of the Blue jay in the various stages of its life, so I thought I would take this opportunity to teach them that birds look different in the various stages of their life. Young children, too, sometimes think that the color of the egg and the color of the bird should be the same or that all eggs are white like the eggs they get from the store. The Blue jay has a cream colored egg with brown spots. We are also reading The Boy who Drew Birds: A Story of John James Audubon as part of their evening readings. So, for the adult Blue jays, I made copies from Audubon's Birds of America Coloring Book for them to paint. Another resource is the Burgess Bird book which can be found here.