Always A Teachable Moment

As you probably figured out, whenever we go anywhere I always try to make it as educational as it can be... it's just that teacher in me. I want it to be fun AND hopefully learn something new from the experience.

Emily is obsessed about birds. She's covered our backyard with feeders and now she wanted a 'bird' themed birthday party.

What to do...what to do... How can I design a birthday party for a dozen fifth graders: make it entertaining and relevant to them; not too boring or childish; plus maybe learn something new? Yes! I'll teach them about the different type of birds that can visit their backyard.

When I told Emily that I'll be teaching her friends about birds at her party, she whined and moaned.. "No.. not teaching.. you always want to teach! Why do you have to teach at my party?!?!?"

Well, I was not swayed even though my daughter was not happy with my idea. This will work.

I created a Scavenger Hunt Game at a large park and marsh area we visited in the summer while biking.

A Party of 12

I broke the girls up into three teams and had them go and take pictures of each item. They had to record the time and write the name(s) of the persons in the picture. I had 22 items for them to find in one hour.

Each team had a photographer, a recorder, and a timer. After each item found, they had to rotate their jobs so each person had a turn.

There were three teams:

Team One (scouting in the garden)

Team Two (exploring the marshes)

Team Three (hiking on the hill)

Some examples of what they needed to find:

Two people next to the Mutt Mitt Box

Two people next to the "No Dogs No Bikes" sign

One person next to this prickly green flower

Two people with this "Keep Out of Marsh" sign

A person sitting on a turtle statue

A person holding a feather

Two persons next to this bird bath

I even had them climb up a huge hill to take a picture with a rock formation.

They also had to take pictures of:

A bird on the ground (taken by Team 1)

A bird flying in the sky (taken by Team 2)

Mallard ducks (taken by Team 2)

Squirrel (taken by Team 3)

Everyone did an awesome job and they all found all 22 items within the 60 minute time limit. Plus they took some beautiful pictures. Perfect for Emily's scrapbook!

Team One won by having the best time (finished in 48 minutes). Team Three won by gaining the most points. (They got 3 bonus points for a picture of a snowy egret.)

Everyone was hot, tired, thirsty and hungry! So we went back to the house to have lunch.

While I cooked mac'n'cheese and hot dogs (Emily's menu choice); Matthew took them to the backyard to build and fill their bird feeders.

Emily bought a variety of seed for them to choose from a peanut mix or a sunflower mix.

After lunch, we had another game to play: Bird BINGO.

I figure if we gave out bird feeders to the girls, shouldn't we tell them what kind of birds they will be attracting? And what kind of seed is best?

Everyone did a great job remembering the names of the various local birds in our area and the kinds of seed that are best for them to keep coming back to the feeders.

Hard working bingo players

Emily is so blessed to have such a wonderful groups of friends!

Oh one more thing... to 'transform' the girls into birds, we added feather hair extensions in their hair. They LOVED this!

Apparently this is a cool new trend. This summer we saw a Fine Feathers Cart at the Mall which was charging $10 per feather. Ten dollars!?!?! What a rip off! I'm sure we can get everything for ten bucks and give them all feathers as part of their party experience.  So my eBay expert husband ordered feathers and the tools for it and watched youtube videos on the how-tos.

Lastly Emily gave jeweled bracelets to her friends as their last favor gift.

Opening her special gifts from her friends

The next day at church, a friend asked her, "Emily, how was your party?" My 11-year old daughter beamed, "It was AWESOME!" Sweet words to a very happy Mother's ears!

Yes, all that hard work paid off! I was glad I prepared all those 'teachable' moments at her party.

I am so thankful for each of the girls that came. I know each one personally (since I taught most of them) and love them as my own. They are a great group of girls who are respectful, polite, thankful and kind to Emily and to each other. Emily has known some since Junior Kindergarten.  Their parents are wonderful too!

I hope that the girls learned something new about birds. Emily loves them so much she just wanted her friends to like them too.

Big thanks to Shawna's dad who tagged along and helped take pictures for us! It was tough organizing and executing everything AND take pictures at the same time. Need to have better planning for next time...