What are they??

Last week we ventured outside for our morning break and play time. Often we take our stuff outside if its nice and just do school out there. Why not? Outside we discovered that God had given us something really awesome to learn about! There were two mysterious birds there. Just there, not trying to fly away, not scared of us at all, just walkin around as if they owned the porch. Well the boys were so intrigued by them that they went inside to get some bread to see if the birds were hungry. And they fed them and the little birds nearly ate it out of our hands... yes they were that tame. Well in honor of this God given opportunity to learn what these birds were, I quickly erased my lesson plans for the rest of the day and we decided to research these birds. Off we went in search of our nature books, the laptop (I mean who researches with out google?!) our microscope to look at the feathers they had dropped, our nature journals, crayons... well you get the point armloads of stuff ended up outside. All in honor of learning as we live!! So, we read and we read and we looked at pictures. One book in particular called "Prarie Animals" was great on info, especially for animals in our neck of the woods. Finally, There it was a wonderful picture of these birds on our porch! To our suprise they were Prarie Chickens!!! So we read all about them. We learned what they like to eat, if they fly, where they live and tons more. The boys ate it up... they drew pictures, and every two minutes had to leave the book to check on the birds as they had curled up in some tall grass for a leisurly nap after their feast of bread crumbs. Well it was a great day all in all and the birds came back for several days in a row. BUT....... yes there is a but. On Saturday following this great lesson, we had a few friends over for football. I was telling one friend in particular who is a real outdoorsman and loves animals about our discovery!!! He couldn't hardly believe it. After all the prarie chicken is endangered. (you would think that would have sent up a red flag to me, but nope) Anyway, he asked me if I took any pictures... so I quickly got out the pics and showed him. Reluctantly and very politely I might add, he said, "Um....Heather, those are not Prarie Chickens." What? What do you mean? But the books? The pics? Well if they aren't prarie chickens then What Are They?? He said, "They are BobWhites" sheesh.

So the moral of the story is. Well, I don't really know what the moral of the story is, but I do know my kids know a heck of a lot of information about Prarie Chickens! I had to humbly go and tell them that yes, Mommy taught them all wrong. Ugh, but to my suprise they were excited!! Hey and the cool part is, they have BobWhites at the zoo. So a field trip is in order!!!! God works all things together for good... right!!?? By the way, supposedly Prarie Chickens look like bobwhites, They are just 8 times as big!! Hey, you can't tell how big something is in a picture!!!