Hello one and all, welcome back to the best nature program of all! Grab your binoculars, pull on your hat and tag along for a day in the lives of your Knee High Naturalists.
The sun was shining, creating a beautiful, golden morning as we arrived to class, bundled up and ready for another day of adventure. With mornings getting colder, we begin searching for bugs with such haste and fervor that we wake the unsuspecting critters up! We are finding less diversity in insects now, the main mini beasts being roly-poly’s, sow bugs, millipedes, the occasional worm and slow slugs. Even though we’ve seen all of these bugs before and basically on a first name basis with them at this point, we delight in finding them again every morning! We noticed that the worms are quite as wiggly and the roly-poly’s have lost their zip, everyone is preparing for a long winter ahead. We are getting in as much hands-on time as we can before everyone settle’s in for a very long nap. Before starting class, we noticed an awfully friendly chipmunk watching us from the tops of fallen logs, playing hide and seek every time we noticed him! He is getting ready for winter, too.
We are starting to remember the lyrics and hand motions for our Good Morning song, proud and excited to join in! We packed up our gear and made a game plan for who would pull our wagon for snack and who would pull it back at the end of class before heading out. Feathered friends and specimens greeted us in the pavilion, keeping watch over our back packs as we ate snack—we were very respectful and waited until after snack to explore all of the cool things! As we ate snack today, we read a book called Bat Loves the Night, by Nicola Davis. We learned that bats don’t use their eyes to see at night, they use their ears! They listen for tiny echo’s bouncing off bugs, trees, plants, etc. to “see” where they’re going and find their food—what a cool super power! We also learned that baby bats can’t fly and that bats, owls and raccoons are nocturnal, meaning that they sleep during the day and wake up to find food and roam around at night.
After snack, we had lots of fun using nature stamps to decorate our own pairs of tiny biny’s (naturalist sized binoculars). Some of us put owls, ducks and woodpecker stamps on our binoculars, while others put animal tracks, trees, flowers and mushrooms on theirs! After our crafting session, it was finally time to explore all of the bird specimens and learn about a magical thing called migration. We looked at a globe and talked about how far north we are and how hard it would be to find acorns, seeds and bugs in the winter when the snow is deep and temperatures are very cold. We tracked a migration pattern from Michigan down to Mexico, Florida and South America where winters look like our summer and birds can find more than enough food and warmth. Some birds like owls, eagles and ducks stick around for the snowy season and we got to see an owl wearing his “mittens,” his feathered feet that help keep him warm. We also got to study a Ring-necked Pheasant, marveling at all of his colors and his very, very long tail feathers.
It was finally time for us to spread our wings and fly, so we put on our binoculars and hit the trail, in search for signs of birds like acorns, wood pecker holes, stray feathers, etc. We stopped at the overlook to use our binoculars to search across the river for any feathered friends in flight. We all got to watch a Blue-jay soaring over head before disappearing down the river, we were so excited! Along the way, we found acorns and all sorts of pinecones to stop and examine. We also found a black cherry tree with sap that felt like jelly or slime and stopped to investigate further, noticing that it was not nearly as stick as pine sap on our favorite climbing tree! Getting chilly walked through the shade of the forest, we followed a game trail out into the sun and began to explore. You would have thought we were on a different planet, watching us jump, run and frolic through the open space, creating our own game as we explored the space.
All too soon, we began our own migration back to the pavilion, making one last stop by the cherry tree as we flew back to the pavilion. Some of us ran and some of us skipped, feeling recharged in the warm sun light. We made sure we had our binoculars before saying good bye and heading home, excited to show our families our brand new tools.
Thank you all for another wonderful week in the lives of your Knee High Naturalists! We can’t wait to see you all next week when we dissect a pumpkin and start our annual fall wildlife study.
