Attracting Birds to Our School Yard.
When we came back to school our teacher asked us to name as many birds as we could. She then asked us to name the birds that were in the pictures. We could only name a few. This term the teacher told us that we were going to learn the names of lots of garden birds. We would begin by learning to name the birds that visit our school playground, but none visited. To attract the birds we would have to leave them food and water. Different food would attract different birds so we decided to start by putting out peanuts.
January 2001:

We wanted to watch the birds from inside the classroom, so we decided to hang the food on the wall of the ESB building in the back playground. The food was placed in the shade, beside a small tree and under an overhanging roof. This would keep the food dry. We hung out three netbags of peanuts. The first week they attracted bluetits and the jackdaws. The jackdaws made large holes in the bags so we had to replace the feeders.We hung up two new feeders.They are stronger with iron mesh. filled with peanuts.
February we attached a nesting box to the wall in the hope that a blue tit or great tit may become familiar with it and nest there. A greenfinch has shown an interest!. We also hung out two fatbags to see if we can attract different birds. We now have greenfinches visiting. We were given a new birdtable made by a child's grandfather, to help us with our project. It can be moved around the playground and this allows us to see the birds easily from our classroom window. We screwed cuphooks up into the table to hang food from. We hung on two bags of peanuts and two fatbags. We hung up a plastic flower basket to act as a bird bath. We put an inch of water in the bottom. There are plastic stands in the bottom for the birds to stand on.

Click here to see the children's drawings of how the area looks now