Hello one and all, welcome back to the best nature program of all! Zip up your jackets, grab your hats and settle in to learn more about a day in the life of your Knee High Naturalist.
Sun in the sky and a chill in the air, fall is here and it’s the best time of the year! Our friends arrived with big smiles and bright eyes, ready to learn about all of the fungus among us. We zipped up our jackets and put our hoods on as we began to dig, rake and investigate before our morning meeting. It seemed like a lot of insects were sleeping, waiting for warmer weather before making their way out into the world. While some of us sleuthed with magnifying glasses in hand, others gathered around to listen to a book called Creek Critters by Jennifer Keats Curtis. We learned that there are little bugs who live in the water called macroinvertebrates and some of them only live in clean, healthy water! Before too long it was time to start our day, we picked up our toys and gathered around to sing our Good Morning song and talk about the day.
A big blanket with mushrooms galore welcomed us to the pavilion floor! We explored different types of mushrooms and compared them by size, shape and texture before counting them all. We then got to explore a mushroom book and learned that mushrooms come in all colors, even purple, orange, pink and blue! We learned that the top of the mushroom is called the cap, the long skinny part is called the stem and learned about gills and pores, too. After our fun mushroom exploration, we washed our hands and dug into snack!
After snack we made our very own mushroom crafts, made “food” like cucumbers, tomatoes and carrots before talking about the season and weather for the day. We decided that it is fall (the best season of all), it’s sunny and a little chilly! We all took a big drink of water and hit the trail to have our first experience with the Boardman-Ottaway River. We stopped at the overlook for a mindful moment where we looked, listened, took big, deep breaths and engaged all of our senses. We could hear the bubbling sound of the river, saw two geese land on the water, noticed orange, yellow and red trees and even felt the warm sun! Once our mindful moment was done, we continued down the trail to find more fun.
Soon, we came upon Jack’s Creek which was so beautiful and so neat. We learned about creek safety and boundaries to follow before moving on for a little while. We made our way to a very cool boardwalk where we discovered a few different types of mushrooms like turkey tails and horse hooves. We learned about lichen and how it needs clean air to grow and made sure to investigate every hole in the boardwalk—we discovered water and lots of moss! We identified Glossy buckthorn, a type of wetland shrub with beautiful little berries and found Joe-Pye weed, a native plant. We even find trees making an X, we wonder if there’s treasure here! We made our way back to Jack’s Creek where we spent the rest of class floating sticks down the creek, on the hunt for crawly critters and talking about all of the things we saw. Before long, it was time to go so packed up our stuff and were ready to rock and roll!
Thank you all for another fantastic, fungus filled day in the life of your Knee High Naturalists! We can’t wait to see you all next week to learn about space and rocks.
