The Fascinating World Of Birds BrainFood Learning ~ Review
Nature study has always been an important part of our homeschooling, well really it’s an important part of our life!
I believe that getting out into nature is a wonderful way to learn and be inspired by the natural world.
Disclosure: I received a free copy of this product for review, all opinions are 100% my own.
We’ve been working on a bird study so we were very excited to have the opportunity to review The Fascinating World of Birds by BrainFood Learning.
BrainFood Learning was started by parents Bryce and Jennifer Mooney. They had been searching for interesting, educational videos for their children and could not find just what they wanted. So they created their own!
Their Fascinating World Of series currently contains three DVD titles. The Fascinating World of Birds, The Fascinating World of Mammals, and The Fascinating World of Insects.
These videos are suggested for children ages 2 to 13, however, I think they are enjoyable for all ages!
The video is largely audio set to beautiful photos of birds, although there are some short video clips throughout.
The DVD starts out teaching about some characteristics that are common among all birds and then continues on to teach interesting facts about 10 different birds. Some of these are Canada geese, ostriches, owls, penguins, and hummingbirds.
Each section is kept short and focuses on some interesting things about that bird, habitat, songs, etc.
After each section, a vocabulary word that pertains to that bird is taught. An example would be after learning about hummingbirds, children are taught the meaning of the word metabolism.
At the end of the video is a four-part review with multiple-choice answers. All the questions and answers are read out loud so it makes it easy for even little children to follow along.
Ours had fun shouting out the answers and seeing who guessed right! The quiz starts out with really easy questions and progresses to harder ones.
Our family has really enjoyed watching The Fascinating World of Birds! The first time we watched it all the way through, pausing now and then when the children had questions or wanted to share something else they knew about that bird. Since then they have watched it over and over.
They were so surprised to learn that a baby hummingbird is just the size of a pea! A few days after we watch the video a hummingbird landed on our clothesline for a few minutes. This gave them a chance to see him up close and make a good connection.
Often we see them flying around and drinking from our comfrey plants but they look bigger when they are flying! Then we’ve had a large Red Headed Woodpecker visiting recently. He’s been hammering away on the pine trees in the bush beside our home.
As they sat and watched him work, they shared with me how woodpeckers’ heads and necks were designed to protect them from damage when hammering on the trees! Yes, another connection was remembered!
BrainFood Learning just recently published a free curriculum on their website. There is a downloadable PDF for each of their 3 nature DVDs.
The bird curriculum package contains information about birds, lesson plans, field trips, and nature trip ideas, quizzes and vocabulary worksheets, printable cards for sorting and matching. There is also a “Wanted” poster that would make a great bird nature journal page.
