Summer Reading Program

The summer reading program kicked off yesterday. It was held in the library and Mummy had signed up for Mal. It is a 6 weeks program and the library had invited guest story tellers for the program.The program was actually meant for preschoolers ie. 3 years and above as the story telling time is longer and kids who are younger may not have the attention span for that. Before signing up, Mummy had talked to Miss Erika, the story teller for Mal’s Wednesday library story telling program to see whether Mal can join the program. Miss Erika was quite encouraging as she thought Mal seem to be able to sit through the normal story telling session and we can give it a try for the summer reading program though he is consider below their requirement age.

We attended the program yesterday and WHAO! it was a much bigger group compared to the Wednesday session but most of them were much older and Mal was one of the youngest boy. The guest story teller for the day was someone from the Wildlife Conservancy. She read a story on Owls, which was not the kind of bedtime story Mummy would normally read for Mal as it was a bit too advanced for him. Mummy had tried reading him a book on monkeys before and he did not seem to show as much interest. At his age, Sesame Street and Walt Disney characters books are still his favrouite! But Mal was able to sit through the story maybe because Mummy was sitting with him this time.

The program after the story telling was much more interesting even for Mummy. The storyteller had brought 3 cages along with her and inside…there were 3 species of birds which are under their protection. They were an owl, a hawk and a falcon! Not sure how much Mal understand about these birds but Mummy sure learn quite abit from the session. It was an eye opener for Mummy as this was the first time for her to come so close to a hawk, owl and falcon!!! Daddy will definitely enjoy the session if he was there as he used to be quite a bird lover.

Other than the interesting reading session, the kids were given some goodie bags with some snacks, stickers, crayons, pencil and charts for the kids to note down what they read for the summer. At the end of the program prizes will be give. This sure was a very good way to encourage reading for the older kids.

It was definitely a very interesting session not just for Mal but for Mummy as well. Had requested some photos from Miss Erika which she had taken for the session so that I can post it here. Meanwhile…here’s some pictures of the big birds we saw in the library….and some of the things Mummy learnt from the story teller…

the owl we saw looks something like this …the owl was under their protection as it was kept by human as pet and was fed all the wrong food, such as hamburger and hotdogs!!! which were not what an owl’s diet supposed to be like. Owls eat rabbits and mice WHOLE with the bones as that they need that for calcium. Due to the prolonged inappropriate diet that the owl had been fed. It suffers from major calcium deficiency and was very weak and cannot walk for long and will get tired easily with flying. Oh another thing we learnt about owls was that it had 14 vertebrae on their neck as compared to 7 for human. Due to this, they have much more mobility in the neck area as compared to human. They can turn their heads 270 degree!!! almost a full circle! and that is why some people mistook owls of being able to spin their head 360 degree as when they do it fast…it does look like a full circle! Their feet and wings were also structured in a special way that made them very silent flyers…unlike the hawk! the falcon that we saw…this species of falcon called the Kestrel. It was one of the smalles falcon in the world. Though small, it has very very sharp beak that it used to killed its prey. It will use it to puncture the neck so that the prey will die instantly. Due to its small size, it will only prey on smaller animals. The Kestrel that was shown to us was under their protection as it has a broken wing…probably ran into something while flying

this was the hawk that we saw. It was a Harris Hawk and we were told this species of hawk like to stand on one another….like stacking cups The Harris Hawk that we saw was under their protection as it was also used to be kept as pet. This one unlike the owl was fed a very healthy diet. The problem with it was that this bird thought that it is human and not hawk, as the moment it was hatched from the egg, human were what he saw and had contact with. they were concerned that if this bird will to be let out in the wild…it will fly into somebody’s home and thought that is a place for him. He had no fear for human beings !