Hello one and all, welcome back to the best nature program of all! Pack your bags, gather your snacks and prepare for a magical migration to the Gulf of Mexico.
A warm, beautiful fall morning made us all so excited for another day filled with nature play. We welcomed a new friend to class today and eagerly invited them to explore as we looked for bugs and read a silly book called Moose on the Loose by Kathy-jo Wargin. Our Good Morning song gets a little louder every time we sing it, the perfect way to start our day. So excited to learn about feathered friends, we hurried over to the pavilion making the best bird calls we could.
We learned about migration and that birds and other animals migrate to find more food and resources like shelter and water during different times of the year. Some of our friends even knew that many birds migrate to Florida in the winter, just like some of our grandparents! We learned that birds have feathers so they can fly and that different types of birds have different beaks and feet to help them eat. We got to explore turkey feet and owl feet to learn how they use their talons to dig or grab their food. We even got to explore an owl and compare it’s differences to a turkey and a duck! Before we washed our hands to eat snack, we examined three different types of nests and learned that different birds make their nests differently to best protect their eggs!
We were quick to eat snack today, we were so excited to enjoy the day and play, play, play! Before we became Mallard ducks and migrated to the Gulf Coast, we played a balloon game as a team to help our bird (balloon) fly to its new home. We discovered that it can be harder for birds to fly in the wind! After this, we were ready for a magical migration. Along the way, we picked up different resources like water (blue), food (green) and shelter (yellow) as we made our way through the Mississippi Flyway. Some our feathered friends picked up the bird flu (red) and we rested to let them recover as we flew over Tennessee and Alabama. If some of the birds in our flock didn’t have enough resources, we shared with them to make sure they made it to our wintering grounds near Florida.
At our wintering grounds we climbed trees, worked on our fort and conducted a bug investigation to feed our very hungry flock. After many holes being dug and logs flipped over, we decided that bugs may have started to prepare for winter with the frost last week, making them much harder to find! We rolled over a huge log and finally found a few roly poly’s, a millipede, one beetle and some very large earwigs. We all flocked around to behold the bug spectacle with magnifying glasses in hand. Soon, it seemed that spring was on the way so we packed up our gear and began one last migration back to Michigan. Along the way we discovered rabbit scat and determined that we must be in rabbit habitat! As we continued our journey, we noticed that our “resource” piles were smaller than our first trek and realized that we must be competing with other birds for food, water and shelter. Thankfully, we all made it back home safe and sound, ready see our families and ready for class the next time around!
Thank you all for another magical week in the lives of your Knee High Naturalists, we can’t wait to see you next Monday to learn all about animal adaptations!
