October 2024

What's Up Woodpecker?

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Academic Standards

Reading Objective:

Students will identify the steps an acorn woodpecker uses to store acorns in a tree to eat them during the winter when food is harder to find.

Next Generation Science Standards:

K-LS1-1: What animals need to survive.

1-LS1: How animals meet their needs so they can survive and grow.

Vocabulary:

store, snugly, squawk, sap

Use your Science Spin to find the best answer to each question.

1. Where do acorn woodpeckers store acorns for winter?
(in a tree)

2. How do acorns woodpeckers make holes in the tree?
(They peck at the tree trunk with their beaks.)

3. Why should the acorns fit snugly in the holes?
(so squirrels can’t grab them)

4. Draw what the woodpeckers do if squirrels try to grab their acorns. 

Go online to print or project the Reading Checkpoint.

  • Acorn woodpeckers are very social. They work together to feed their babies, which are kept safe inside an extra-large hole they peck in a tree.
  • The creator of the cartoon character Woody Woodpecker was inspired by an acorn woodpecker. It tried to peck a hole in his vacation cabin!

Materials: Manipulatives in three different colors that you pretend are acorns, space to hide and hunt for them, pencils, copies of the skill sheet

Overview: Kids pretend they are squirrels finding and sorting acorns in winter.

Directions:

  1. Before the lesson, scatter manipulatives in three different colors around the classroom. They will represent different varieties of acorns. (If you lack time for this, let kids take turns hiding acorns for each other.)
  2. Start the lesson by reminding kids that acorn woodpeckers store food for winter in a tree. But squirrels mostly hide their acorns in the dirt. When it gets cold and the squirrels get hungry, they dig them up and sort them.
  3. Ask kids to pretend they’re squirrels, finding the acorns they stored for winter. They can work in groups to gather some.
  4. Using the skill sheets, kids can arrange their “acorns” by color, forming a graph. Which color do they have most of, or least? How many total? What other observations can they make about the number and type of acorns they found?