Mrs Mica's Homeschooling Adventures: Challenge Board 5: Owls & Who Dunnits

Previous Challenge Board: Challenge Board #4: Animal Cryptarithms

Dissect an Owl Pellet: Owl Pellet CSI

Why Owls & CSI? Well, I've been co-teaching a CSI class in our Homeschool Co-op, and when I was prepping our Animal CSI day, I knew all my kids would enjoy extensions to those activities. With Halloween coming up in just over a month, you could also dive deeper into "bones" on the anatomy side if you wanted to. Here is a neat article that helped inspire the whole thing, which we used to bridge their CSI learning to the owl pellets activity: Animal CSI: Inside The Smithsonian's Feather Forensics Lab.

We then used this funny Critter Scene Investigation from TPT to introduce our pellet activity. Strong readers can collect evidence not only from the pellets but by analyzing and highlighting the nonfiction portion that conflicts with the "suspect testimony" of the owl. For my 7yo, who wasn't quite ready for the CSI worksheet, we used this goofy video to introduce owls and owl pellets: Bird Girl: Great Horned Owl.

As for the owl pellets themselves, there are several places to buy owl pellet kits, which often include plastic tongs like you might get for perlers, and a bone chart to help you ID the bones you find. The pellets are heat sterilized, but you can get a better "CSI" experience by having your students still glove up. You can also find bone charts online.

Listen to an Owl

Learn to Identify Five Owls by their Calls (Audubon Society)

Curious about a specific owl? Try the All About Birds website to listen to their calls and read other facts.

Then see if you can identify these creepy bird calls (Audubon Society).

Draw an Owl

My 7yo loves this realistic owl Art for Kids Hub drawing tutorial. They also have cartoon-y owl tutorials.

Owl Math

I was quite impressed with this owl math mystery picture that can be used for students of any math level. Students answer the math questions using the addition, multiplication or another appropriate worksheet, and the answers help them color in a grid which, of course, turns out to be an owl in a Halloween hat. Or, if you specifically want division with remainders, try this other mystery picture owl.

Compute Height by Measuring Bones (CSI)

With Halloween coming up, perhaps you have a (hopefully fake) skeleton hanging around, and you definitely have a student or two you can measure. Go to CSI Web Adventures and click "No Bones About It" to find out how CSI agents use bones to estimate the victim's height. They also have online activities you can try out under "For Educators."

Read more about how criminal investigators and anthropologists uncover mysteries using skeletons, curtesy of the National Museum of Natural History's "Written in Bone."

Draw an Owl Food Web

Whether your students are 5 or 15, dissecting an owl pellet is the perfect time to construct a food web.

For younger elementary, you can introduce the topic with a video like this All About Food Webs Video, and a book like the Secrets of the Garden: Food Chains and the Food Web in Our Backyard.

Then, for the food web, use the "Memory" printable cards like in this woodland animal printables pack or this one and glue them down in a food web instead.