We were going to tackle the Bird book this year but I was horrified reading the animal one. Thank you for being honest. And get yourself the free Merlin app and just enjoy listening for them while you are out in nature, that leads to a true memorable and practical relationship with many bird types. I'm so glad I'm not the only one who can't with Burgess! I'm not a Beatrix Potter fan either... same condescending way of scolding conversations through the whole book as "Mother Nature" does to all the animals.
My boys, 6 and 8, absolutely LOVE the BBB. They love things they can relate to. They listen for bird calls in our own yard, and they act like it’s the actual birds from the stories.
I'm not going to lie.... last year with Y1 we ditched Birds and just choose a bird to study each week using other resources, including field guides and mini documentaries here on UA-cam! My daughter hated that book, too, and so did I!
I just found this video and was laughing so hard as you described your feelings on the Burgess Bird book. We are reading the Burgess Animal book right now and my kids love it. I do not. I know they’re learning so much about animals but Burgess’ lengthy sentences are a mouthful for me so I had to utilize Librivox to get thru it. I think it’s wise to put books away or switch them out if they aren’t working for your students. Anyways, thanks for the giggle over Burgess. Hope this year is going better.
Out of all the scheduled books for this year the Burgess Bird Book is my daughters favorite. She absolutely loves it and she will ask to read it more. She does struggle to narrate it but I know she is grasping it because she will point birds out to me and will tell me what kind they are and who they are from the book. We don’t find it textbookish at all, it’s more like a story to us about Peter rabbit and his connections and friendships with all the birds and a few other animals.
I think the trick is to only read about one bird at a time, which means we had to do many readings per week of this one. Also, it got A LOT more exciting when we actually read about birds we've seen. I moved back and forth through the book to pick out birds we had seen when out on our weekly hikes.
I haven’t tried the bird book but my kids love the Animal Book (about North American Mammals). But you definitely have to follow their interests. They only learn what they want to learn!
Sometimes.... it is hard when we (parents) don't like a book.... We have to put it down for awhile, and go back to it later............or change it up. Then you have that aha, moment where something starts to work when it didn't before...... We have enjoyed the Burgess Books and have read them over and over. But short lessons is the key here. When my children start to go..... "How much longer"....... I have actually written little "stars" in my book, where I will take a chapter and divide it up into about 3 different days of reading. This Depends on what we are doing, and the age of my child too. Sometimes a color page from a Peterson Bird coloring book helps to keep listening attention too.....or we trace the color page bird into our journals, then color it as we listen. But I do remember when my children were young, it was harder. We have read them too when my children were older elementary and Highschool and have enjoyed them so much more. However, that to say, We do supplementation with lots of other items along with it........ We have read them straight thru keeping the chapters in order.... or we jump into the season where we are...... Plus as we see birds in our backyard, parks, etc, and we identify them, we sometimes will skip to the chapter in the book with that specific Bird, so that we can reRead the bird descriptions. We also use the Burgess Book with a "Voice" Bird Book, ("Bird Songs, 250 North American Birds in Song, by Les Beletsky" different books like this are found on Amazon too.) .......where we can Hear what the Bird Sounds like. (or we also sometimes look up a Bird on UA-cam for the sound)..... Sometimes we go to the park, and just read one chapter of the book before we go on a nature walk. We bring our nature notes and pencils to record things that we encounter at the park. Sometimes we watch on youtube, "How to Draw a Bird" along with reading about the Birds. In the mornings when we hear lots of Bird Chatter outside, we quietly go out and sit on the porch listening and watching the birds. Then as we read the Bird Book, we can imagine ourselves being in the book too. So we don't do the same thing every week, or sometimes we do.... do the same thing for a few weeks in a row, then change up our location..... It makes it more fun to be out in Nature when reading this book. I have come to really enjoy this book and the more we repeat this book the more I really like it. But I do know what you are talking about and I do remember when it was hard to get thru it sometimes. That was back when we were just doing the book without living it out. It has to come alive for you. We take this book on vacation with us too. But also break the chapters down into short readings, and stop in the chapter when it is introducing a New Bird, and read that in the next lesson, this way you don't get the birds mixed up too.
We are using this book in the Simply Charlotte Mason curriculum and we are loving it. It's mine and my 9yo favorite thing we are doing now. I like it so much that I am surprised that there are others that hate it. I guess we are just all different and appreciate different things. I bought mine a set of binoculars and we have put out seed which draws the song birds to our yard and we are able to watch them up close. We've also downloaded the Audubon App on our devices and when we see a bird outside we go to our app and look it up and see what it's called. We like that we can listen to birdcalls as well. I am always open to new ideas so I'm going to check out the other books that are being mentioned here.
Aww, that is too bad your daughter cries! 🥺 I think you’re switch was a good one, makes sense to me! From what I’ve learned so far - and I listen to A Delectable Education podcast, so that’s probably where I’m coming from - the Burgess Bird Book is more of a “Special Studies” book, not really nature lore. And I think the Trumpet of the Swan would fit that category too. The Dallas Lore Sharp books named for the seasons (they’re delightful!!), and the Arabella Buckley Eyes and No Eyes books are good Nature Lore books. We did use Burgess Bird book for our Nature Special Studies book for our first term, and I was so excited about it - and for me, it did fall flat. I didn’t plan to finish it, just to read whatever we read in one term, so we accomplished that goal. Now, my 6yo loved it! He was giggling through it, he loved Peter and Jenny Wren interacting. But, he can read it on his own later if he wants to, we will be having different special studies each term.
My two oldest and myself LOVE the Burgess bird book. Probably because we've always read about Peter Rabbit and Beatrix Potter's other stories. It may or may not have anything to do with how I do different voices and accents and really try to emphasize the readings but we have lots of birds where we live and have just so enjoyed it. And I've never considered myself a bird person. Ever. Like how boring! But I gotta say, we do love this book.
I'd love to know more about the cards! My kids are obsessed with card games right now. And are enjoying Burgess bird book. They laugh at the snide comments back and forth between Peter rabbit and the birds. Lol I think they relate since our family teases that way sometimes.
The cards are just color pictures of the birds in pairs to play memory with. I printed them from...the files I think? But I wonder if it would be a fun game to create pokemon- type cards with birds! I wonder if anyone has made that already. Hm.
I couldn't agree with this more. We are just finishing up Year 3, and I have felt this way about a few different books. I so badly have wanted some of these books to work, but nope. :-)
Oh no, I'm sorry you didn't like the B. Bird Book. We loved it! We found Jenny Wren so funny! We didn't take it seriously though....we read it as a family the second time around along with Gather Round's bird study. I try so hard to be good and not buy all the other Burgess books lol.
karena02 No, we never did. We sometimes enjoy looking up what birds we see in our yard, and listen to their sounds.... we’ve also enjoyed watching nests and babies in our yard. The Handbook of Nature Study has come in handy in those moments.
I don't think it's wrong for someone to just do some research on other options for nature study and switch it out for something else that works better. Make the curriculum your servant, not your master.
My dear don’t feel outdone by not being able to stick with a book. We all have different taste and sometimes what I like isn’t what others like. We have tried the Burgess books and we didn’t stick with them either and that’s ok!🙌🏾👊🏾 Glad you found what works for your tribe! ✅Well done Momma!
I'm so glad you found something that will wk for your learner! Yes keep the flash cards,maybe you can use them in another form of teaching! For both of my children we picked up books from the library about birds & watched YT videos, did printouts for them to cut & color! I mostly allowed them to pick it out though! Well wishing you the best & don't worry you will find out there are gonna be alot of books & curriculum you will change up 👍✌💞
We are pretty set on the Charlotte Mason approach to schooling. I don't see that part changing. After doing AO for four years and investing in the books, I don't see us changing from that either, at least not before Jr. High. Overall, we love the program! It's just little tweaks here and there. 👍 What do you use?
I had to laugh at this because my son told me this morning, 'oh I can tell you all about the animals but not the nonsense of Mother Nature talking and blah blah blah' lol I just chose the birds that are in my area, which area bout 16-18, and we'll do those with my new Y1
We omitted this. Just gone. We had tried the Animal book last year (basically a Year 0), and my son liked it, but couldn't narrate it to save his life 🤣🤣🤣 we skipped this one this year (I bought it, but couldn't bring myself to do it) - but I think we'll try it again next year, since he did *like* it, and it will have been quite awhile for him, but we'll see 🤷♀️
I highly recommend The Trumpet of the Swan and Mr. Popper's Penguins as more fun bird-based books! We also added the Secret Garden as a family read aloud and there's a fun relationship with a robin in it that has my kids curious about getting to know birds, too. I think building their curiosity and openness to relationships with birds is more important than a parade of birds described chapter by chapter.
I think it's normal for some kids to connect more with a book than others. I was curious to know what exactly your year 1 hates about the bird book? I'm not sure if my year 1 loved the book, but he certainly enjoyed it. I had to break each chapter in a couple of readings, and I gave him a coloring page of the bird, and then I would ask him to tell me only one thing he thought it was interesting/or that he liked/ or learned. He definitely couldn't narrate the whole chapter back, but just asking for one thing was enough. And sometimes we would listen to the librivox recording, instead of me reading, and we all colored.
My oldest didn't like it because he said by the third or fourth chapter that it was the same as the other chapters - we just kept meeting new birds and telling about them. There was no story progression. My second child didn't like it because she got confused about all the different types of birds and wanted to keep the "characters" straight, but again, no real story line. Just interviews with birds. So this time, I promised myself I would make it more interesting with the pictures, etc. Maybe she was poisoned by her older siblings, but by the second chapter, she already pronounced it the worst book because it was just boring and, "reading about birds is boring." Lol Normally I don't back down from readings we don't like. I just postpone them or reschedule them. This time, after three tries, I'm going to try something new and see how it goes.
We were going to tackle the Bird book this year but I was horrified reading the animal one. Thank you for being honest. And get yourself the free Merlin app and just enjoy listening for them while you are out in nature, that leads to a true memorable and practical relationship with many bird types. I'm so glad I'm not the only one who can't with Burgess! I'm not a Beatrix Potter fan either... same condescending way of scolding conversations through the whole book as "Mother Nature" does to all the animals.
My boys, 6 and 8, absolutely LOVE the BBB. They love things they can relate to. They listen for bird calls in our own yard, and they act like it’s the actual birds from the stories.
I'm not going to lie.... last year with Y1 we ditched Birds and just choose a bird to study each week using other resources, including field guides and mini documentaries here on UA-cam! My daughter hated that book, too, and so did I!
I just found this video and was laughing so hard as you described your feelings on the Burgess Bird book. We are reading the Burgess Animal book right now and my kids love it. I do not. I know they’re learning so much about animals but Burgess’ lengthy sentences are a mouthful for me so I had to utilize Librivox to get thru it. I think it’s wise to put books away or switch them out if they aren’t working for your students. Anyways, thanks for the giggle over Burgess. Hope this year is going better.
Out of all the scheduled books for this year the Burgess Bird Book is my daughters favorite. She absolutely loves it and she will ask to read it more. She does struggle to narrate it but I know she is grasping it because she will point birds out to me and will tell me what kind they are and who they are from the book. We don’t find it textbookish at all, it’s more like a story to us about Peter rabbit and his connections and friendships with all the birds and a few other animals.
I love Trumpet of the Swan. Always a good choice.
I think the trick is to only read about one bird at a time, which means we had to do many readings per week of this one. Also, it got A LOT more exciting when we actually read about birds we've seen. I moved back and forth through the book to pick out birds we had seen when out on our weekly hikes.
Yes, I'm sure reading about birds you know makes it more real and relatable!
My son loves this book but I honestly don’t think he has learned a thing but he likes Peter 😂
I haven’t tried the bird book but my kids love the Animal Book (about North American Mammals). But you definitely have to follow their interests. They only learn what they want to learn!
Sometimes.... it is hard when we (parents) don't like a book.... We have to put it down for awhile, and go back to it later............or change it up. Then you have that aha, moment where something starts to work when it didn't before......
We have enjoyed the Burgess Books and have read them over and over. But short lessons is the key here. When my children start to go..... "How much longer"....... I have actually written little "stars" in my book, where I will take a chapter and divide it up into about 3 different days of reading. This Depends on what we are doing, and the age of my child too. Sometimes a color page from a Peterson Bird coloring book helps to keep listening attention too.....or we trace the color page bird into our journals, then color it as we listen. But I do remember when my children were young, it was harder. We have read them too when my children were older elementary and Highschool and have enjoyed them so much more.
However, that to say, We do supplementation with lots of other items along with it........ We have read them straight thru keeping the chapters in order.... or we jump into the season where we are...... Plus as we see birds in our backyard, parks, etc, and we identify them, we sometimes will skip to the chapter in the book with that specific Bird, so that we can reRead the bird descriptions. We also use the Burgess Book with a "Voice" Bird Book, ("Bird Songs, 250 North American Birds in Song, by Les Beletsky" different books like this are found on Amazon too.) .......where we can Hear what the Bird Sounds like. (or we also sometimes look up a Bird on UA-cam for the sound)..... Sometimes we go to the park, and just read one chapter of the book before we go on a nature walk. We bring our nature notes and pencils to record things that we encounter at the park. Sometimes we watch on youtube, "How to Draw a Bird" along with reading about the Birds. In the mornings when we hear lots of Bird Chatter outside, we quietly go out and sit on the porch listening and watching the birds. Then as we read the Bird Book, we can imagine ourselves being in the book too. So we don't do the same thing every week, or sometimes we do.... do the same thing for a few weeks in a row, then change up our location..... It makes it more fun to be out in Nature when reading this book. I have come to really enjoy this book and the more we repeat this book the more I really like it. But I do know what you are talking about and I do remember when it was hard to get thru it sometimes. That was back when we were just doing the book without living it out. It has to come alive for you. We take this book on vacation with us too. But also break the chapters down into short readings, and stop in the chapter when it is introducing a New Bird, and read that in the next lesson, this way you don't get the birds mixed up too.
We are using this book in the Simply Charlotte Mason curriculum and we are loving it. It's mine and my 9yo favorite thing we are doing now. I like it so much that I am surprised that there are others that hate it. I guess we are just all different and appreciate different things. I bought mine a set of binoculars and we have put out seed which draws the song birds to our yard and we are able to watch them up close. We've also downloaded the Audubon App on our devices and when we see a bird outside we go to our app and look it up and see what it's called. We like that we can listen to birdcalls as well.
I am always open to new ideas so I'm going to check out the other books that are being mentioned here.
Aww, that is too bad your daughter cries! 🥺
I think you’re switch was a good one, makes sense to me!
From what I’ve learned so far - and I listen to A Delectable Education podcast, so that’s probably where I’m coming from - the Burgess Bird Book is more of a “Special Studies” book, not really nature lore. And I think the Trumpet of the Swan would fit that category too. The Dallas Lore Sharp books named for the seasons (they’re delightful!!), and the Arabella Buckley Eyes and No Eyes books are good Nature Lore books. We did use Burgess Bird book for our Nature Special Studies book for our first term, and I was so excited about it - and for me, it did fall flat. I didn’t plan to finish it, just to read whatever we read in one term, so we accomplished that goal. Now, my 6yo loved it! He was giggling through it, he loved Peter and Jenny Wren interacting. But, he can read it on his own later if he wants to, we will be having different special studies each term.
I purchased Bird Bingo for my year 0 student. She loves it. It is beautifully made. And my daughter loves it.
My two oldest and myself LOVE the Burgess bird book. Probably because we've always read about Peter Rabbit and Beatrix Potter's other stories. It may or may not have anything to do with how I do different voices and accents and really try to emphasize the readings but we have lots of birds where we live and have just so enjoyed it. And I've never considered myself a bird person. Ever. Like how boring! But I gotta say, we do love this book.
I'd love to know more about the cards! My kids are obsessed with card games right now. And are enjoying Burgess bird book.
They laugh at the snide comments back and forth between Peter rabbit and the birds. Lol I think they relate since our family teases that way sometimes.
The cards are just color pictures of the birds in pairs to play memory with. I printed them from...the files I think? But I wonder if it would be a fun game to create pokemon- type cards with birds! I wonder if anyone has made that already. Hm.
I couldn't agree with this more. We are just finishing up Year 3, and I have felt this way about a few different books. I so badly have wanted some of these books to work, but nope. :-)
Oh no, I'm sorry you didn't like the B. Bird Book. We loved it! We found Jenny Wren so funny! We didn't take it seriously though....we read it as a family the second time around along with Gather Round's bird study. I try so hard to be good and not buy all the other Burgess books lol.
We tried Burgess Bird Book several times in our homeschool as well...we were never able to stick to it!
I'm sorry to hear that, but I guess it's nice to know we aren't alone! Did you find a book you enjoyed in its place?
karena02 No, we never did. We sometimes enjoy looking up what birds we see in our yard, and listen to their sounds.... we’ve also enjoyed watching nests and babies in our yard. The Handbook of Nature Study has come in handy in those moments.
LOL!! I'm screaming with laughter! My kids liked it, but Madam How/Why was the one we couldn't do!
That's so funny! It's hilarious how everyone has their "one book" they just can't do!
My children love anything thornton burgess. You could always read Sammy Jay by him.
I don't think it's wrong for someone to just do some research on other options for nature study and switch it out for something else that works better. Make the curriculum your servant, not your master.
My children liked The Tarantula in my Purse by Jean Craighead George.
My dear don’t feel outdone by not being able to stick with a book. We all have different taste and sometimes what I like isn’t what others like.
We have tried the Burgess books and we didn’t stick with them either and that’s ok!🙌🏾👊🏾
Glad you found what works for your tribe!
✅Well done Momma!
Thank you! Did you replace the book with something else?
I'm so glad you found something that will wk for your learner! Yes keep the flash cards,maybe you can use them in another form of teaching! For both of my children we picked up books from the library about birds & watched YT videos, did printouts for them to cut & color! I mostly allowed them to pick it out though! Well wishing you the best & don't worry you will find out there are gonna be alot of books & curriculum you will change up 👍✌💞
We are pretty set on the Charlotte Mason approach to schooling. I don't see that part changing. After doing AO for four years and investing in the books, I don't see us changing from that either, at least not before Jr. High. Overall, we love the program! It's just little tweaks here and there. 👍 What do you use?
Goodmorning @@karena02 everything sounds good! We are using Time4Learning as our base curriculum & fill-ins from there as needed!
I had to laugh at this because my son told me this morning, 'oh I can tell you all about the animals but not the nonsense of Mother Nature talking and blah blah blah' lol I just chose the birds that are in my area, which area bout 16-18, and we'll do those with my new Y1
What about Birds of the Air by Arabella Buckley? Its free on Archive. :)
I'll check it out! Thanks!
We omitted this. Just gone. We had tried the Animal book last year (basically a Year 0), and my son liked it, but couldn't narrate it to save his life 🤣🤣🤣 we skipped this one this year (I bought it, but couldn't bring myself to do it) - but I think we'll try it again next year, since he did *like* it, and it will have been quite awhile for him, but we'll see 🤷♀️
I highly recommend The Trumpet of the Swan and Mr. Popper's Penguins as more fun bird-based books! We also added the Secret Garden as a family read aloud and there's a fun relationship with a robin in it that has my kids curious about getting to know birds, too. I think building their curiosity and openness to relationships with birds is more important than a parade of birds described chapter by chapter.
We have not enjoyed Burgess or Holling. 😳
I think it's normal for some kids to connect more with a book than others. I was curious to know what exactly your year 1 hates about the bird book?
I'm not sure if my year 1 loved the book, but he certainly enjoyed it. I had to break each chapter in a couple of readings, and I gave him a coloring page of the bird, and then I would ask him to tell me only one thing he thought it was interesting/or that he liked/ or learned. He definitely couldn't narrate the whole chapter back, but just asking for one thing was enough. And sometimes we would listen to the librivox recording, instead of me reading, and we all colored.
My oldest didn't like it because he said by the third or fourth chapter that it was the same as the other chapters - we just kept meeting new birds and telling about them. There was no story progression.
My second child didn't like it because she got confused about all the different types of birds and wanted to keep the "characters" straight, but again, no real story line. Just interviews with birds.
So this time, I promised myself I would make it more interesting with the pictures, etc. Maybe she was poisoned by her older siblings, but by the second chapter, she already pronounced it the worst book because it was just boring and, "reading about birds is boring." Lol
Normally I don't back down from readings we don't like. I just postpone them or reschedule them. This time, after three tries, I'm going to try something new and see how it goes.
How old is your daughter? My kids like the burgess animal books but I start reading them when they are only about 7 or 8 years old.