outdoor -ed activity with my grade 2's

Before christmas I went back to my first blocks school to do an outdoor education activity with the students. The students and I really enjoyed this day. I read the book "That Chickadee Feeling" by Frank Glew. This is a great book and the students were very engaged. This was the first time they had heard this story and they thought that a chickadee feeling was only a feeling that you could get if a chickadee landed on you. We then went into more depth about different feelings that could be considered a chickadee feeling. The book described how the boy fed the chickadee in his hand and they were excited to be a part of feeding the little chickadees. This tied nicely into making the bird feeders. We made suet by using lard. I told the students that they could also make suet by grinding up fat from beef and pork. This activity was very messy but the students were on task and engaged. The students were able to do this activity independently except for tying the ribbon around the pinecone. I would not have thought that this would be a concern. The clean up was a little tedious however I swept when the students were out for recess.
The birdhouses were a lot of fun for the students, however I’m not sure how long they will actually last outside. They students were able to name all of the shapes and identify them in their birdhouse. The students were excited to take these home as a Christmas present for the birds.
I enjoyed this day and I think that it was a good learning experience for the students. I’m grateful to my associate teacher for letting me teach for the day even though I wasn’t on my teaching block. I asked her if I could come in and teach this lesson and she was very eager.