What if your bird could choose the music they listen to? 🤔
Enrichment is a big part in keeping birds happy and healthy. Music is one of the many way we keep birds engaged here at the school! 😍
Dance parties every night! 🥳
What if your bird could call you while on vacation?
Parrots get very stressed during times away from their normal caregivers. Being able to call their caregiver is one way we help to minimize their stress here at the school. 😊
We open the door and set out treats to invite Holly to play with us here at Parrot Kindergarten Boarding & Day School 🥰
(Safely outside with her own tablet!)
I added Holly to the birds' Commboard under "sister" 💗 and told Ellie, "Tell Mom when you see Holly!"
Ellie sits on my shoulder while we teach our new little friend.
And if Holly comes to visit while I'm busy, Ellie shouts out let's me know :)
If you're looking for Ellie, you'll find her at the window watching for Holly (and refusing to go anywhere else at all) 😂
Can't wait for Holly to start talking to us too!
Boarding here means fun leaning lessons AND lots of outside friends for your cute bird too 🥰🥰🥰
🥳 WANNA TEACH YOUR BIRD TOO?? 🥳
**TABLET GAME LESSON TODAY! Balloon Pop!**
(Live webinar @4pm est)
Isabelle is nothing if not passionate 🥰
(Her little squeal at the end! 😍😭)
Are you ready to turn your bird into a little gamer? 🎮🤓
Today at our Bird Learnin' Palooza we are learning Balloon Pop! 🥳
We're also gonna talk about how balloon pop is transformational for motor development and future gaming skills! 🥰
If you haven't registered for our workshop yet, click here! https://palooza.parrotkindergarten.com/
Balloon Pop lessons start in just a few hours 🥳
She's sooooooo cute! Oak's learning to communicate with the CommBoard too.
Cheeses box is v important but more important is cheeses BAG! 😁
Ellie's learning to write the letter E and omg her little foot! 😍😭
It was her first time and she worked on this for 40 minutes today!
🌿🏵🌿🏵🌿🏵
Obviously teaching an animal how to write is a weird and slightly uncharted journey 😳😂
At the basis, there are motor skills that must be developed, things like touching the screen, tracing lines and curves, keeping her tongue in the screen, touching targets, tracing things in the right direction....
It reminds me of coaching and of basketball practice when I was a kid. The muscles and skills must be developed, but if we only ran in the same spot, or did thr exact same 1 exercise, we'd get bored and the skills wouldn't develop fully.
We ran up stairs and in the parking lot. We ran in the field and in the gym. We ran up bleachers.
My girls have basic skills to develop, but sticking to the same letters or practices cause Ellie to walk away.
She's been learning (and is pretty good at) n, l, o, c, r, u, and t.
But she's not perfect, she's doesn't write 100% on cue.
And she's also started walking away from lessons. She's engaging in more stereotypic behavior. She needs something harder :(
It's a bit of a tough balance and a step in faith to say, "You don't have the last bit down, but we're gonna keep going. Let's try something really hard." 😳
It feels counterintuitive to bring on more challenge when she hasn't perfected the last project.
But then it seemed to me that these challenges are more akin to running on the grass, on the pavement, up the stairs, up the bleachers...😎
You don't have to be perfect to run, you've just got to keep moving.
Sooooo...
I decided to begin teaching her e, which i think is probably the hardest letter! She worked in it for 40 minutes solid today - we practiced lines, circles, writing wizard tracing, and then free tracing. She's not ready to do it by herself, but she was wagging her little tail feathers and hopping with excitement to have somethi
I gave Isabelle a toilet paper roll but didn't expect her to start trying to clean the bathroom 😂
This was really neat! When she can grab some toilet paper, she bunches it up and starts trying to clean the wall and the curtain rod - almost as if she's trying to clean like I do!!
She's done it every day for the past few days, for sometimes up to 10 minutes!
Culture: habits learned from others. It exists across species, and sometimes between species! <3
Of course, I don't know for sure, but it feels so much like she's watched me clean all these years and now that she's got a cloth, she's gonna clean just like mommy 🥰
She looked so proud of herself!
Lily did a thing!! She's so cute and boopy and she did sososo well! At the end of the lesson she bit my finger cuz she wasn't done learning yet 😝
On Sunday morning, Joe arrived early to my house with coffee and breakfast. No sooner was the coffee poured in mugs when Ellie instantly plunked herself on the kitchen counter and raced like a crazy bird for a sip.
She loves tea so much 😂
I intercepted the drinks and (because mothers actually secretly have 7 arms) simultaneously grabbed her communication board while juggling her and the mugs and everything else.
"What do you want?" I held up her tablet to test her 😂
And she raced through her menus. She said TO DRINK - TEA 😊
Joe and I laughed so hard. I love her communication board so much!!!
So anyway today we sat down to learn - she opted to blind review her letters (80% woot!). When I asked, "What do you want?" so she could pick her next activity, she picked TO EAT - APPLE.
🤔
Which I've never taught her before 😳 but obviously there's the word apple and a picture and she's been to that menu before for omelets and pancakes 🤫
I was still kinda skeptical about whether she really meant it (she's literally surrounded by pine nuts and sunflower seeds for training).
But brought her an apple and she ate it right up, every bite! 🍎
Girl has cravings 🤣
I feel like she's figured out how to navigate her board so well and can even use it to ask for things I haven't taught her because she can read and she fully understands how to use the menus, how to navigate through everything.
It feels like talking with a smart but nonverbal older child.
I'm so happy we can communicate 😍😍😍
My bird is smarter than your honor student 🙈
(Just kidding!)
There's a hurricane outside and all my little animals are uneasy today. I'm distracting Ellie with her new favorite tablet game - matching 😍
The app is 123 Numbers and this is the pairing game 👍
She's showing some fear responses, including toward the tablet, so I've positioned the play stand so she can move closer or further away as she feels comfy 😎
Good job, Ellie! ❤
Ellie loves to read! This was my favorite childhood book, poor book is half fallen apart🙈 It's so special to share it with her. 🥰
I give Ellie treats for silently reading the pages first, and them I ask her to touch where I read aloud. She always does so well 🤗
Teensy Lily is learning about musical instruments because of course my bird daughters should have a well rounded and richly cultured education! 😝
And they love music so much! 🙃
This is just one of the new trainings coming your way soon 🥰 She did sooooo good! 🤗
🌿🎶🌿🎶🌿🎶🌿
I've been working (a little frantically!) on our new manual, the Ultimate Parrot's Lesson Book with 40+ training videos for every kind of bird learner, from the littlest to the biggest, and from Zen birds to chomping machines...
(All of whom live in my house 😁)
So I've been shooting a zillion training videos with the girls every day to demonstrate the lessons and here is a short list of reasons I have to do retakes a hundred million times per hour:
1. Lily has decided to Murder Things instead of touching them, and in fact does not want to touch them, she wants to kill a chopstick. Or a pen. 😳
2. Isabelle is singing an intense and desperate song of her people trying to conjure the neighbors outside.🤦♀️
3. Tillie wants scritches pls and also a kiss
4. Isabelle is sobbing with a broken heart 😬
5. Ellie has decided to simultaneously shred and delicately balance the craft materials on her right wing, just at the shoulder bit.
6. The neighbor is cutting the grass.
7. Isabelle's SOUL needs a seed ball 😭
So that's how my weekend is going 😂
But but but!! This crazy fun and cute training manual is almost done, and just behind it is the tablet one and then my summer projects will be all finished and I'm gonna drink a lot of Sangrias 😁😁😁
