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Friday, May 18, 2012

Go Birdwatching! [Printable Game]

NOTE: This freebie is no longer available for download because iStockphoto limits the number of printable impressions.

If you’ve been following for awhile, you know that my son has a fascination with birds. (Is he the only kid to use spy gear binoculars to birdwatch?)

When he noticed recently in our bird book that many species of birds were dimorphic (the male and female birds look different), I got the idea to make a fun card game to help him recognize these feathered friends as they stopped at our feeder.

Thanks to the recommendation from a blog follower who turned me on to iStockPhoto, and Curt from client relations who assured me giving away this game wouldn’t be a violation of their copyright, I was able to bring this idea to life!

Before we played, we reread my favorite children’s bird book, which I broke down and bought after we were fined by the library for keeping it so long (oops!). To read my glowing review of Frank Mazzola’s book Counting is for the Birds, click here.


The cards I made were to be played like “Go Fish.” Five cards are dealt to each player. Play alternates between players with each looking at the cards in their hand and asking their opponents for the same species of birds as the cards they were holding. A match consists of four cards – two males and two females of the same species.

After reviewing their cards and seeing two cardinals in their hand, a player would ask an opponent, “Do you have any cardinals?” If the opponent does, they must surrender ALL of their cardinal cards. If they don’t, they say, “Go birdwatching!” At which time, the opponent will pull a card from those that remained after cards were dealt, which are spread out facedown between the players.
The individual with the most matches when one player runs out of cards wins. (As you can probably tell from the picture below of my son's matches, I was easily defeated during our first round of play.)



19 comments:

  1. Thank you so much for sharing this fun bird activity. I love your ideas.

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  2. These are great! Thank you.

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  3. This is such a fun activity! I love that it allows you to work on number and birds at the same time.

    Thank you for linking to Read.Explore.Learn.

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  4. Thanks for sharing! The pictures are beautiful and the game looks great!

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  5. What a fun game, thanks so much for sharing it!

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  6. What a lovely printable! Thanks for sharing with the Afterschool Blog Hop :)

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  7. Thank you so much for sharing, we love birds at our house and I know this will be a big hit. Thanks for linking up to our Afterschool Blog Hop too.

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  8. This is wonderful! I've already saved my copy! My whole family loves birds and bird-watching, and I'm so excited to play with them!! Thank you so much for sharing at Teach Me Tuesday!! I'm pinning this too!

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  9. This is a great printable! I look forward to teaching my son about the different types of birds with these cards (and playing the game too!) Thanks for sharing!

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  10. This is a great idea. I know that I could do something like this with other things that my sons love. Thanks for sharing on Saturday Show and Tell, I hope you'll be back this week.
    -Mackenzie
    http://www.cheeriosandlattes.com

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  11. I am so getting those cards!

    Thanks for sharing on fun Sparks

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  12. I've always found it amusing that male birds are more colorful than female birds. What a great idea for a game.

    Thanks for linking up to Science Sunday!

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  13. Thanks for sharing. My girls love identifying birds.

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  14. Thank you for sharing!!

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  15. I came across this via Pinterest - great idea! Also, thanks for the book recommendation, I just went to my library's site and requested it!

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  16. Thank you very much for producing & sharing these cards. They look so great that I'm going to use them for a program late next week. I so appreciate it!
    Sharon Bandhold
    Youth Services Librarian
    Plattsburgh(NY)Public Library

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  17. I know I commented a while ago, but I thought I'd let you know that I'm featuring this today with other Bird resources!

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