Pirates and Cardinals

No, I'm not talking about baseball teams!  Our themes over the past couple of weeks have been pirates and cardinals- as in the people and the birds!  We've checked out lots of pirate books, which was a completely new thing for my kids since we haven't really "done" pirates before.  They were pretty tame books, and it gave us the chance to talk about stealing and other silly pirate things (like saying "Argh!" and swinging your fist!).  Beth drew a pirate on her magna-doodle:

I liked it. :-)  The next week we talked a lot about cardinals since every morning we watch them eat at our homemade bird feeder.  We love watching the "Daddy Cardinals" and the "Mommy Cardinals," even sometimes we see a "Teenager Cardinal."  We've seen them feed each other, watched the males chase each other off and dance around the backyard, and tried to give some of them names since some of them have pretty distinguishing markings (like Baldy, who is missing some feathers on top of his head!).

Not sure who this guy was, he looks young but not like a young cardinal?

We watched some youtube videos of birds feeding their young, babies hatching from eggs, and an older male feeding a younger bird.  We checked out lots of books on birds and chickens, and here is the drawing Beth did of a Daddy and two babies:

(I didn't have the heart to mention they didn't have beaks, I think the Daddy's big smile makes up for his lack of a beak!)

This week we're going to study some geography!  We have friends and family all over the country, a giant United States puzzle that Beth is really great at (I'm pretty sure she knows where the states go better than I do), and we're going to talk about good behavior on road trips. ;-)