Episode 22: What kinds of creatures would God have filled the skies with on Day 5? We explore the major groups and examine a few of the coolest. Then, the kids will tell us about some experiments about sound and time.
Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day
Once everything was in place, God started moving quickly to fill his newly prepared world with creatures!
And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.
And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.
And the evening and the morning were the fifth day. Genesis 1:20-23
Creation Ministries International has an article for kids covering this special day of Creation Week.
Just what are these “fowl”?
Birds
We started our exploration of the most obvious type of flying creature at:
- KidZone What is a Bird and their following pages covering several main categories.
We barely had time to skim over the major groups of birds, only visiting Bird Nature’s page listing Eastern US families.
To explore more, you might start at the British Trust for Ornithology and their huge list of species and families
I found this admission of the trouble grouping animals neatly into families gives all scientists interesting:
Bird Families of the World: “As is sometimes said, defining the limits of a bird Family is “more art than science.””
Bats
All About Bats has a page listing some of the well known and interesting types of bats.
For more check out:
- Kid Zone Bats
- Bat Worlds: Types of Bats
- Birds of Flight: Types of Bats
Pterosaurs
This one was a lot of fun to look at!
University of California, Berkeley has a page with a great picture of the varieties of skulls we’ve found from this flying reptile group.
We also checked out how big Quetzalcoatlus was compared to us at Enchanted Learning
Extra: Pterosaurs.net has a bunch of artists’ renditions of various pterosaur species. Many of them are painted with fuzz, so you might want to take the time to find out why they think these reptiles were furry.
Insects
All fowls that creep, going upon all four, shall be an abomination unto you.
Yet these may ye eat of every flying creeping thing that goeth upon all four, which have legs above their feet, to leap withal upon the earth;
Even these of them ye may eat; the locust after his kind, and the bald locust after his kind, and the beetle after his kind, and the grasshopper after his kind.
But all other flying creeping things, which have four feet, shall be an abomination unto you. Leviticus 11:20-23
Hebrew is known for having words you can use in many ways. This time it’s the word “fowl”. Here in Leviticus we can tell it’s not talking about chickens, but rather bugs!
We will discuss where insects fit into Creation Week more next time, but you might enjoy having a look at
- Insect Identification.org: Flying Insects
Experiments
We bought our copy of Science in the Ancient World by Dr. Jay Wile straight from Berean Builders. Christian Book Distributors also carries it if you’re planning an order with them anyway.
You can find a dozen sound experiments including some with rubber bands at the Science Notebook
Join us and try out the ice melting/time experiment at Creation Quest with Pat Roy. That section is part of their free sample, and I think you’ll see how helpful it is to have a video presentation especially geared towards kids. Besides being thrilled with how clear and attractive his presentation was, I also appreciated only needing to take the time to stick some water in the freezer, secretly take it out the next day, and push play!
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