Hello one and all, welcome back to the best nature program of all! Pull on your rain boots, grab your magnifying glass and get ready to hit the not-so-puddle filled trails!
We celebrated our soggy, warm morning by flipping over the biggest rocks and logs we could find. Thanks to the warm, wet weather we found squirmy wormies, millipedes and so many roly poly’s! We worked as a team to flip over the hard things and shared the pleasure of investigating all of the creatures we uncovered. We even saw a piece of wood actively turning into soil, how cool! After two weeks, we were so excited to have the whole class back together again. We joined in an excited round of our Good Morning song and quickly made our way to the pavilion where five little pumpkins were waiting to greet us.
We learned all the needs of seeds (water, the right temperature, air) and the life cycle of plants from pumpkins to trees! We got to see examples of the stages of seed growth and learned that seeds contains every the start of every tree or plant. We even became seeds planted in the soil, we waited for rain and sun before we could stretch our roots and reach our limbs to grow big and tall. Then fall came, we lost our leaves, spread our seeds and went dormant again until spring. During this dormant period, we washed our hands, gobbled down our snacks and decorated our own little pumpkins! As friends finished up decorating or snacks, we became rock climbers and scrambled over every boulder we could see, yelling with glee.
When it was finally time to start our hike, we packed up shovels, rakes and magnifying glasses before we hit the trails. Today’s big ticket item was puddles! So we hiked down big steps and a giant hill, along the river, across the creek twice, through the wetland and the cedar forest all in hopes of splishing and splashing. Unfortunately, we never found ANY puddles! We found two mysterious holes in the ground that were big enough to fit five naturalists and a teacher, so we explored those and the cedar seeds near by. We learned about deciduous trees who lose their leaves in the fall and conifers like pine trees who keep their leaves all year. We identified different trees like white cedar, spruce, maple, oak, apple and aspen by their leaves and bark! We even found a cool horse hoof mushroom as we made our way down to the river.
We spent the last part of day at a special place called Rock Beach where we got to feel the cold water of the Boardman Ottoway River running through our fingers. We looked for cool rocks, experimented with splashing different sized rocks in the water and began volcano construction. Magnifying glasses in hand, we were eager to explore the smaller details of the natural world, noticing the grain in wood and tiny insects crawling over bark. All too soon, it was time for us to go, so we hiked back up the two giant hills and big set of steps before arriving back at the pavilion where Ms. Miranda greeted us. We gathered the layers we shed, our pumpkins and bags before teetering over to our pick up spot, excited to see our families!
Thank you all for another amazing week in the lives of your Knee High Naturalists! We hope you have a wonderful week and we look forward to seeing you next Monday to learn all about survival skills!
