Hello one and all, welcome back to the best nature program of all! Pull on your hats, zip up your jackets and jump right in to join us for a day in the life of your Knee High Naturalists.
We started off the chilly morning bundled up, some of us with hats, some of us with mittens—all of us eager to see what types of bugs were awake and active with the cold temperatures! It never takes long for us to begin our investigations, but it seemed like we had to flip more rocks than normal before encountering any mini beasts. When we did find them, they seemed to be moving a little more slowly than usual! We wondered how their little bodies stayed warm on such a cold night and noticed we were finding more critters under bigger objects—they probably stay warmer under bigger things! Before starting our day, we even found two wooly bear caterpillars, tons of ants and lots of little snails snacking on a little squash, preparing for winter.
We talked over snack about our favorite animals, our favorite types of candy and our favorite season! We were eager to play on the rocks and color, so snack didn’t take too long today. We were planning on a bigger hike, but discovered that we could make paper airplanes with our coloring pages and launched into an impromptu lesson about gravity, flight and aerodynamics, oh my! We learned that gravity is something we can’t see, but can feel and it’s what causes everything to fall to the ground instead of float. We began putting small rocks inside our planes to see how they would change the flight of our planes. Two or three small rocks were mostly fine, our planes descended quicker. Four rocks was too many! We then got onto the subject of meteors and discussed those and learned that meteors are always falling from outer space, but they’re very small. Who knew that was what shooting stars are!
Finally, we talked about the weather today and made the keen observation that winter is indeed on the way. To celebrate National Salmon Day, we learned all about the life cycle of salmon, why they lay so many eggs, their migrations and how they use their sense of smell to find their way home. We can’t believe they go back to the same nest (redd) they hatched out of! Finally, we were off for our big adventure to the Discovery Boardwalk. We know our days being able to catch and observe frogs and turtles are limited, so we took advantage of our opportunity. Along the trail, we noticed there was water beneath one of the boardwalks and got to observe it trickling out of a hillside. We got another crash course in ground water, water tables and where our water comes from when we turn on the faucet at home—we didn’t know there was so much water beneath our feet!
While we weren’t able to see any turtles, we saw small signs of life at the bottom of the pond, slowly swimming around as we spooked them. We caught one small, slow frog and talked about amphibians, reptiles and how they are cold blooded. We know that they’re starting to slow down because their environment is getting colder and they’re bodies are telling them it’s almost time to hunker down for colder months ahead. We found so many tadpoles, also a little slower than normal, and collected them in our observation tank where we all had the chance to hold and watch them. We caught two mud minnows and two dragonfly nymphs, too! We had so much fun exploring the pond and catching so many critters, it was hard for us to pull ourselves away to get ready for the end of the day. We said good bye to everything we caught and told them we hope to see them all again in Spring before heading back for pick-up.
Thank you all for another amazing week in the lives of your Knee High Naturalists! Our curiosity led us to so many fun conversations and discoveries today, we can’t wait to see you all next week when we learn about Fantastic Fungi.
