The end of our owl unit

Today was the last day of our owl unit. We spent the morning doing our first ever dissection! It was VERY exciting! We first read the book "Owls" by Adrienne Mason. We learned about many different types of owls, and where they live. We talked about owls special body parts- including their extra neck bones that allow their heads to move farther than ours- so that they can look over their backs! We thought that was super cool! We also talked about their special silent wings, and their strong toes with sharp talons. When we were finished with the book we had a little verbal "test" with some new vocabulary words (prey, owlet, habitat, talon, endangered species, and pellet). We discussed the food chain of the barn owl and looked at a big diagram that showed the pictures of all of the animals involved in the food chain. Then we talked about owl pellets! The owl cannot digest the bones, teeth, feathers and fur of the animal it eats so it coughs up those things in a dry pellet about 8 hours after eating. The children of course were fascinated by this and couldn't wait to cut into the pellets to figure out what that owl had been eating! (Just a note, the owl pellets that we used were owl pellet replicas that were store bought!)
We had so much fun finding the bones and fur and feathers and working together to figure out what animal we thought we had by looking at the bones and the picture of the owl food chain. I really didn't know how the children would like this activity, I figured they'd have fun, but you never know until you try it. They had a BLAST! Quinn said "Thank you for letting us find the bones in the owl pellets Heather!" And many others were just thrilled with the finds and couldn't wait to tell their parents about it! It was just so much fun for boys and girls and different age groups as well. We all enjoyed ourselves. It turns out we had bone replica's of a bird, a vole and a mole.