Hello one and all, welcome back to the best nature program of all! Grab your warmest socks, zip your jackets up and join us for a day in the lives of your Knee High Naturalists.
We all arrived to class at the same time today, ready to learn about terrific turkeys and our new skunk friend! We took a short trip inside the nature center to grab the turkey for closer observations and learn about the badgers, too. When we finally made it to our morning meeting spot, we quickly stacked our backpacks in the wagon and took off in search of signs of life from skunks and squirrels to bugs! We had to roll a lot of rocks and flip a lot of logs before finding one little roly poly and a slow little sow bug. We are sad the insects have undergone their winter hibernation and look forward to seeing them all again in the spring! We’re learning how to use magnifying glasses really well and couldn’t stop giggling when all of our friends faces and hands looked huge—sometimes science can be silly! We decided that we had a lot on our schedule for the day and sped through our Good Morning song, so many of us know all of the words and motions now. We took turns pulling the wagon and made our way to the pavilion where more turkey artifacts awaited us.
We lined up all of our backpacks and took off all of our winter gear before washing our hands and digging into our delicious snacks. We took a vote on four books—two turkey books, one skunk book and a general nature book—we unanimously voted on the skunk book! We were enamored with the secret lives of skunks after meeting Flower last week and were shocked to learn that they can shoot their spray up to 15 feet. We even learned that they are omnivores and eat everything from flowers, plants and grasses to mice, rattlesnakes, bugs and eggs of all sorts! Skunks live in all sorts of places and seek out burrows that are under ground or under buildings during the winter—it now makes sense why Flower lives under our tool shed. After learning all about skunks and their special ways to stay alive in the wild, we jumped right into our turkey craft for the day. Soon, colorful pieces of paper decorated the pavilion floor and our jackets as stray glue sticks were used during animated conversations! Some us used glue sticks for the first time and some of us helped our friends find the best ways to use them—we are such a supportive group of friends.
Once we pulled ourselves away from craft time, we gathered around Tom the Turkey to learn more about these big birds. We gently touched all of his different feathers and couldn’t believe how much color we could see when the sun hit him! We noticed his feathers had different patterns on different parts of his body and learned that this is for camouflage in the woods. We learned that Tom has a beard, though it looks a little different than the beards we’re used to seeing! His head was so colorful, too, we thought there was no way it could really be that pretty in real life…but it’s true! Turkey heads are pretty much the original mood ring, they change color based on blood flow and can be greatly influenced by their emotions or moods. We got to hold a turkey fan, check out fried turkey feet and learned about all the parts on their heads like waddles and snoods!
We set off on our hike, stopping by the overlook to see the river one last time before the bridge arrives—we can’t wait! We walked like turkeys, flew like turkeys and made silly turkey sounds as we made our way to the pine forest. We became squirrels as we clambered up the climbing tree, excited to stretch our arms and legs! Some of us resumed fort constructions and others used the turkey feet to clear away pine needles and scratch around in search of bugs. We took turns climbing the tree and offering words of support to our friends who tried to climb new branches. The turkey feet were passed around and many logs gathered for the fort until we realized some of us forgot our mittens, we packed up our stuff and headed to the playscape to finish our day. We made sand castle with cones, rolled down the sledding hill, helped each other on the balances beams and climbed the spider web with such confidence you would have thought we truly were arachnids. We waited until the very last minute to head up front, soaking up as much nature play as possible! We observed the hole under the shed where Flower the Skunk lives and made our way up front where all of our families were waiting to see us.
Thank you all for another amazing week in the lives of your Knee High Naturalists! We hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving and look forward to celebrating all of our growth, accomplishments and new friendships for the last week of class!
