Are you planning on taking your students or family on a birdwatching trip?  Try playing BIRDO - a combination of birdwatching and bingo.  This activity will help keep your children attentive while on the walk, and it is simple to set up.

1. Print out a copy of the BIRDO sheet for each child sheet.  (Click here to open)
2. Write in the names of birds you expect to see while on your walk.  It is best if you make each child's sheet slightly different - but the center square should be the same for each child.  It should be the most common bird on your walk.
3. Give each child their BIRDO sheet and a crayon to check off the birds when they see them.
4. Have a small incentive for the child who gets BIRDO first.  Just like Bingo, children can get BIRDO by connecting five boxes in a row either horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. 
5. Click here to see an example of a BIRDO sheet already filled out.  Remember, it is best to make each BIRDO sheet slightly different.  This example would be perfect for the Northeast in springtime.

Other suggestions:

• If you are computer savvy, you can create your own BIRDO in a simple table in Microsoft Word or other software..  The best part about this is that you can easily cut and paste the names of the birds in different boxes to make each sheet slightly different.
• Do you have extremely young children who can't read yet?  Create your BIRDO in a word processing program such as Microsoft Word.  Instead of typing the names of the birds in, insert pictures of the birds.  This process can be time consuming, but the result is worth it.  Once you have all of the bird pictures in the table you can simply drag them around to different boxes to make each sheet slightly different.
• Bird names aren't the only thing that you can use.  Try putting behaviors in the boxes such as a bird: singing, defending it's territory, sleeping, roosting, etc.  You can also put bird related items in such as a woodpecker hole, nest, or bird droppings (that will raise a few eyebrows!).
• Have older kids that need a challenge?  Give them a blank BIRDO sheet and tell them to fill it out with birds they expect to see on the walk, but they can only use a bird's name once.  I have tried this, and the birds you think will be easy aren't the ones you always see first. 
• For older children, make it a rule that only the person who first identifies a bird can check it off their BIRDO list.