Apologia Young Explorers Zoology 1: Bird Feeder Experiment

We are officially home-schooling our nine year old grandson, Paul.  We have unofficially been home-schooling him for weeks before.  I chose Zoology 1 because he did not get much in the way of science before in school.  Paul does not like anything related to Anatomy.  He does like birds and has built several bird houses.  We already have several resources: Identiflyers, bird identification books,  a birdhouse, and two Squirrel-buster bird feeders.  Paul is reading each lesson and working through the Notebooking Journal exercises.  We started the Life List in the Journal.  Here are state checklists for birds.  We are using the Identiflyer to learn bird calls.

Today, we started the “What food do birds prefer?” experiment.  We are following the guide in the textbook and using the Speculation sheet in the Journal.  We have two squirrel-buster bird feeders.  Paul is measuring the number of centimeters each day of bird food consumed.  Here are a few suggestions.  I modified the hypothesis.  A hypothesis has two parts: null and alternate.  For this experiment, the null hypothesis is, “The birds will eat the same amount of bird seed from each feeder.”  The alternate or alternative hypothesis is, “The birds will eat more seed from the feeder with premium seed.”  (We have generic bird seed and a bag of parrot seed I bought accidentally instead of parakeet seed—which my parakeets will not eat and spit out instead.   A better comparison would be between sunflower seeds and birdseed.  This experiment may have confounding variables, things which confuse the experiment.  In our case, while we do not have squirrels eating the bird seed, we may attract a raccoon which visits.  He climbs the gutters and walks over the roof to shake the bird feeder attached to the deck.  We plan to note any outside interference.  Factors such as squirrels and raccoons are confounding variables.  Paul is going to identify the controlled variables, too: same bird feeders, same location on the deck, same amount of seed, same weather conditions, etc.  We are adding a section to the speculation sheet called ‘Discussion’.  In the Discussion, all of the factors which can lead to bias or uncertain results are mentioned.  We just started.  I plan to have Paul post photos and results along with his report.