Hello to one and all, welcome back to the best nature program of all! Slip into your rain gear, grab a basket and join us for a day in the lives of your Knee High Naturalists.
We started off the beautiful autumn day for lots of buggy nature play. As tradition goes, we flipped every rock and log in demos for new friends! Today was especially important, we wanted to find as many insects as possible before the frost arrives later this week and they begin their serious preparations for Winter. We noticed dark, chunky slugs and a lot of little wood roaches, jumping and climbing through the fallen leaves. We found a very active, wiggling worm and passed him around for everyone to see before gently placing back under his favorite log. We found a chunk of wood with so many sow bugs and roly-polys that we couldn’t even count them! After finding at least one hundred critters, we decided to tuck them back into their cozy soil homes and start our day. We sang the loudest rendition of our Good Morning song yet and had so much fun following along with the hand motions! After packing up our mighty wagon, we took turns pulling and pushing it to the pavilion.
After washing our hands and grabbing our snacks, we made a group decision to move back to our picnic table for snacking rather than the blanket. Hungrier than a squirrel in the fall, we ate our snacks quickly and became mountain goats, scrambling our big boulders and scoping out our favorite trees for leaf collecting later. We made our weather observations for the day and gathered tools for our leaf hunt before setting out on our great journey!
We made sure to stop and use the boot brush to get off any unwanted seeds or critters before hitting the trail and stopped to wave at the excavator down by the river. We learned about conifers like pine tree whose needles stay evergreen while hard woods with beautiful leaves are called deciduous as they decide to lose their leaves every fall. After learning about these differences, we knew the best spot to look for leaves would be in the deciduous forest! We identified oak leaves and their cute little seeds, acorns. We even found baby maple leaves and giant basswood leaves, perfect for making leaf confetti!
It didn’t take long for us to fill our cones with all sorts of fallen nature artifacts, so we took a surprise visit to the Nature Playscape and made the best use of the Mud Kitchen before fall truly sets in! Some of us dug rivers while others made leaf confetti with hole punches or just our hands. We even found birch bark from a paper birch tree and got to write and draw on it! Just as our confetti making kicked into high gear, the rain came and we decided it might be best if we got our jackets on before continuing with our mini adventures. Once fully suited up, we headed back and conquered both the balance beams and spider web with our helpful friends by our side. All too soon, it was time for us to go, so we packed up our gear and were ready to roll. Before saying good bye, we all took a handful of leaf confetti and threw it up high!
Thank you all for a wonderful week in the lives of your Knee High Naturalists, we’re making the most of the warm weather before fall fully settles in. We look forward to seeing you next week when we celebrate Youth Confidence Day and focus on building confidence in the outdoors!
