Hands-On Science for Homeschooling: Owl Pellets!

Dissecting owl pellets in homeschool is awesome for any age, but my son in particular loves science. He loves experiments so much, it’s the theme of his fifth birthday party this year! Along with the owl pellets, we’ve been experimenting with a few other scientific activities.

If you have a science-loving kiddo in your home, you may like the Scientist Scavenger Hunt & Mystery I made for his birthday party. It’s a scavenger hunt with 8 clues, tied to a mystery: who ate the chocolate bar? You can scaffold it however you like, and I designed it for preschool-2nd grade. There’s even an extension to introduce the Scientific Method! You can take a peek, here.

At his family party this year, he got several different experiment kits, so we’ve been having a blast with those! I especially love the ones that National Geographic makes; we’ve loved the Volcano & the Crystal Garden ones!

For Owl Pellets, I actually ordered a small set from Amazon this year. (Not an affiliate link, just linking it in case you are curious). I was pleasantly surprised with the quality. They are labeled “large owl pellets,” and they were! My daughter (2nd grade) joined my preschooler for this activity, and they both found several different rodents’ bones within a single pellet!

Last year, we used Treehouse Schoolhouse’s Free Owl Dissection Worksheets, and I laminated them to use again this year. My kids loved browsing the guide, trying to figure out which bones belonged to which rodent! My daughter actually had a small bird skull in her collection!

Homeschool Anatomy Projects

Owl Dissection paired perfectly with our Science Curriculum this year–we are doing Anatomy! (If you like researching options, I have an in-depth review of all of our core subjects here, and an in-depth review of all our elective subjects, here.) While Human Anatomy is our subject, it was fun to see some similarities in the skeletons of the rodents. Here are some fun projects we’ve done for Anatomy this year in our homeschool:

• We studied the Skeletal System and printed out full-body-sized skeletons for each of my kids!
• I printed colored images of their faces, at the library, and we pasted those on top.
• Over the course of the year, we added colored cutouts of the various organs, as we learned about them!

Thanks to our science knowledge, a lot of the verbiage on the Owl Dissection forms was familiar to them! We learned that rodent bones have a lot of the same names as ours! Femur, tibia, fibula, pelvis, skull, mandible, etc!

Both my second grader (top) and preschooler (bottom) enjoyed this activity. I jotted down the names of the specific bones on their sheets. Then, we glued them on and stuck them in plastic page protectors, so I wouldn’t have rodent bones scattered all over my house. 😉

This activity was engaging, time-consuming, and provided a lot of bang for its buck. I also loved that I could incorporate the content into things we’ve already learned this year. We live near a nature preserve and the snow is starting to thaw, so I am hoping we can go looking for owl pellets in the wild, sometime soon.

Have you ever dissected owl pellets with your kids? What did you think? I’d love to hear!

Cait