Owl Pellets

What's For Dinner? 

How Does Energy Flow?

I wrote a grant that was funded by Donors Choose for owl pellets last September.  It was the perfect addition to my unit on Food Chains & Webs.  It was my first experience doing this activity and it was a huge success.  We spent three days dissecting, sorting, identifying, graphing and diagraming.  

I put the students in groups of 2.  The students worked together and were so engaged in the activity. We found mostly mice and a few shrews and moles.  Some pellets contained more than one skull.  Make sure you stock up on gloves, sanitizer and wipes.

We sorted the bones and created a class graph on the types we found.

One patient student tried to create a skeleton...she wants to be a paleontologist or archeologist.

  I think she is on the right track!!!

My students enjoyed this video...

warning the song will get stuck in your head!!!

Here is the company that I used, there are many places to order them:

All About Owl Pellets- fact sheet on Carolina.com

Pellets -  ordering info on Carolina.com

I have a subscription to Superteacher and I used their sheets for the lesson.

Here is a free resource that I used for owl adaptations.
 They also have info on Owl Pellets and Food Chains.
Barn Owl Trust

Animal Books for Upper Elementary

I am getting ready to start my Plant and Animal Adaptation Unit in Science.  I recently purchased some books by Bobbie Kalman that I would recommend for upper elementary classrooms.  Most of the books I find are geared for younger children.

Mammals, Birds and Fish...Oh, My!

Here is another science unit that I pulled together  before the end of the year!  These are the standards that I  wanted to cover this year.   Some of the standards will be taught in third grade next year but I  still wanted to cover them to help build their schema.

• Living vs. Nonliving Things
• Food Chains and Webs: herbivores, carnivores and omnivores, producers and consumers
• Vertebrates vs. Invertebrates
• Classification: Mammals, Fish, Birds, Amphibians and Reptiles
• Adaptations- physical features and behaviors, mimicry, camouflage, hibernation and migration

I have animal books but need more. trade books to address my fourth grade standards.  Here are a few titles that I have found:

Great Science Books

I purchased the following packet from Teachers Pay Teachers.  I did not use it as a Report but as activities after each lesson.  The sheets are very open-ended.

Animal Report Writing

 Final Draft Template

My children drew the food chain/webs from the unit above.

Bird Beak Adaptation

The children use different utensil to collect food(items) and learn why beaks are different

We used "The Sciencesaurus" to read the sections on the above standards.  The kids are very familiar with animals but needed to learn the new vocabulary.  Great text for fourth and fifth graders.

Here are the animal classification posters we made after reading 

about the 5 groups of vertebrates and took notes.

Check out the clips on Study Jams and Brainpop:






Here are some activities that I found that can be added to your unit:

Free Powerpoint

Food Chain

Food Chain

Animal Classification

Lap Book ideas for Adaptations

Adaptations