Hello one and all, welcome to the best nature program of all! Grab your backpacks, lace your boots and get ready to come along for a day in the life of a Knee High Naturalist.
We started off our first day with big smiles and warm welcomes to friends both old and new, excited to begin class with beautiful views! We started out our day by exploring our morning meeting area with rakes and magnifying glasses in hand, turning over every rock and log on our little piece of land. We found squirming worms and active roly-polies hiding in the soil, mushrooms abound with slugs slowly climbing through them and a mystery feather. We learned our Good Morning song, had our very first morning meeting and got familiar with the flow of our days.
After our meeting, we packed up all of our tools and backpacks before pulling our wagon over to the pavilion, our home base! We took turns washing our hands and sat down for snack together, learning more about our favorite foods, favorite seasons and things we love to do outside. While we finished up snack, we colored and picked out our book for the day, Fresh Fall Leaves by Betsy Franco. We talked about the weather for today and celebrated the Fall Equinox by learning more about this special day! We learned that equinox means equal night and that our days are going to start feeling shorter—that just means we have to fit even more fun into our days! We looked for signs of fall like changing colors, falling leaves and native flowers starting to die back before we hit the trail for our first exploration.
Feeling the pull of water, we made our way down to the Boardman-Ottaway River and noticed things like trees, big rocks and waves in the water. Along the way, we found a bunch of leaves that had already fallen—the perfect time to stop and make leaf confetti! We danced and giggled as leaves rained down on us, so excited to welcome Fall. We observed bumble bee’s and found our favorite sticks before making our way further down the trail to a very special spot. With grasses towering over our heads as we hiked down the trail, we talked about habitat for small critters like rabbits, chipmunks and mice, noticing the grass would be the perfect hiding spot!
Finally, we arrived at Jack’s Creek and made quick work of setting up our boundaries and going over safety rules before we began our explorations. We raced leaves and sticks down the creek, harvested mud to adorn the cedar trees with mud faces and continued to seek out all sorts of crawly critters! We observed snails and slugs popping their upper tentacles out as they looked around and smelt their environment—it was so cool! We found a large white grub who will eventually turn into a beetle, found so many wiggling worms that we eagerly passed around and used our magnifying classes to get closer looks. We even found roly-polies galore and a new type of very wiggly and jumping worm that was white with grey spots and a tiny red head. We think it could be a Stiletto Fly larva, a hungry predator who hunts other larva in the soil!
All too soon, it was time for us to make our way back to the pavilion to pack our bags and head home. We stopped to look at Goldenrod and watch a bumble bee gathering pollen from a beautiful Aster flower before ending our day.
Thank you all for an incredible first week of Knee High Naturalists, we had so much fun getting to know your naturalists and watch their curiosity guide their explorations this morning. We look forward to seeing you all next week when we’ll learn about Water Wonders and all things aquatic!
