Hello to one and all, welcome back to the best nature program of all! Put on your party hat, grab your warmest mittens and join us for a wintry day in the life of a Knee High Naturalist.
A snowy, blowy morning welcomed us to class, snowflakes dancing through the air and landing in our hair. So excited to spend our last day in class together, we raced to the snow paint and got to work! We mixed greens, blues and yellows to make different shades of turquoise and chartreuse before moving on to paint the trees. As more friends joined, we decided we wanted to make a snow critter and settled on creating a little porcupine! We took turns adding snow to the pile before carving out a body and began to decorate using pine needles, twigs and snow paint. It became the most colorful porcupine we’ve ever seen! A few of us played Jump the River, wanting to move our bodies and test our skills! Knowing we had a big day ahead, we quickly put away our cones and paint before settling in for our final Good Morning Song of the year. We sang loud and proud before packing up and making our way to the pavilion. Some of us couldn’t resist taking a break to stomp through, roll in or eat the fresh snow along the way, laughing as snow tickled our noses and melted down our chins!
After ten weeks, we knew the drill and put our mittens, hats and jackets on the front table before lining up our back packs and washing our hands. A little chilly today, some of us even used the hand dryers for an extra burst of warm air! We all settled in with our snacks and voted on our final book of the year—Snowy, Blowy Winter by Bob Raczka. We couldn’t stop giggling as we listened to the silly rhymes and talked about our favorite winter activities like sledding, tubing and sipping on hot cocoa. We talked about our seasonal celebrations and favorite traditions before rolling into our ornament making! We used mason jar lids to cut out our salt dough and found our favorite stamps to decorate with. Elephants began to roam across the table with owls flying around and deer slowly sneaking through. We had so much fun that some of us made multiple ornaments, we like stamping dough way more than paper! While we waited for everyone to finish their crafts, some of us bundled back up and head to the snow with paint and shovels in hand. We made snow butterflies, carved another little porcupine and painted our space to our hearts’ content.
We decided we wanted to spend our last day working on our fort, climbing trees and sledding so we grabbed our favorite colored cones and hit the trail! We found animal tracks leading into the deep snow, so we weebled, wobbled and toppled as we tracked the elusive snow porcupine. Unfortunately, it snowed too much for us to follow the tracks into the woods, so we hypothesized on where this critter may have gone. As we continued our journey, we stopped to investigate rabbit tracks and mysterious holes in the snow…we think the bunnies were digging for fresh greens and snacks! Soon, our fort was in sight and we left tracking in the dust as we ran to check on construction progress. We all crawled inside, cozy, but making plans to add a kitchen and living room in the new year. We climbed trees, made snow castles and used our winter activity dice—we rolled like snowballs, fell like snowflakes and waddled like penguins!
Time was flying by so quickly that we almost forgot about sledding! We hurried to gather our gear and slowly stomped our way through the snow until we got to the sledding hill. Old pro’s at this point, we claimed our favorite sleds and eagerly climbed the hill, ready to show off our skills! We took turns as everyone made their way down, some friends riding sleds like snowboards, some riding penguin style (on their belly) and others trying to tip off at the bottom. We have spent the rest of the time laughing, competing to see how far we could go and enjoying our last day together! As always, the end of class came too soon, we stacked our sleds and slowly made our way back to the pavilion, using up the last of our snow paint and breaking new trails. We made our way up to celebrate with our families, excited to show them our crafts!
We can’t thank you all enough for such a special season of Knee High Naturalists. This season, we had so many younger friends who helped inspire us as a group and reminded us to take joy in the little things. These younger friends found fantastic role models in our older naturalists, eagerly tagging along and absorbing all of the information our older naturalists shared with us. So many of us worked on developing our independence through gear management, open and taking care of our snacks, keeping track of our favorite tools and verbalizing needs to those around us. We found inspiration every day through fascinating natural objects, new critters, secret spots, hidden habitats and our friends.
Our motor skills got serious use through the use of tools, flipping anything we can find to pick up tiny bugs or interesting rocks, scrambling up boulders or around trees, snow painting and most of our other daily activities! We developed a sense of respect and understanding for the natural world through observations, close-up encounters and first interactions. Our empathy and compassion have grown through the new friendships we built and near daily interactions with some form of wildlife from frogs and turtles to roly-poly’s, millipedes and skunks.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—it’s a unique privilege we have to spend our days with your children, fostering their innate curiosity, cultivating their compassion and facilitating up close interactions with all aspects of the natural world. We’re continually inspired by the resilience, joy and curiosity of your naturalists! We hope you have a wonderful holiday season and New Year, we look forward to seeing you all again very soon!
