Building Blue Bird Houses One Fourth Grader at a Time

MILL HALL – Mill Hall Elementary fourth grade teachers Mrs. Jenn Kaluzny, Mrs. Jodi Reeder, and Mrs. Renee Serafini joined together and provided their students a lesson about blue birds. Day one of the curriculum brought Mr. Kirk Miller, PA Central Region Wildlife Conservation Officer to the classroom. Mr. Miller showed the students a power point presentation to teach them about blue bird habitat, what nests look like, where blue bird houses should be placed, and natural predators of the birds.

On day two, Mr. Miller came back and with the help of volunteers, the fourth graders build blue bird houses of their very own. Students pieced together the houses and then used electric drills to put them together. The students then took the houses they constructed home to find a place to help blue birds nest. All materials and tools were provided by the PA Dept. of Wildlife Conservation.

“I’ve been doing this program for a few years” said Miller. “My predecessor, Ken Packer began this program for local schools over 20 years ago” he added.

Mr. Packer was on hand volunteering with the bird house building. Mrs. Kaluzny and her co-teachers had to find time around the testing schedules to bring the program to their classes. “We had to strategically find time between the scheduled testing and good weather to bring Mr. Miller in, but thankfully it all worked out” she said.