Hello one and all, welcome back to the best nature program of all! Put on your layers, bring a buddy and get ready to dive into a day in the lives of your Knee High Naturalists.
We started off the brisk, beautiful morning with a guiding question from one of our naturalists, “What kinds of bugs do you think we’ll find today?” We decided to check new sticks and rocks that we’ve never flipped over and began targeting the big logs! We noticed that little logs with only pine needles and leaves under them didn’t seem like very good homes compared to ones that had bare soil beneath them. We found a tiny roly poly curled up around a pine needle, holding tight as it snoozed the morning away! We even found a small colony of ants guarding their eggs when we flipped over a new rock—they began to carry them away, afraid we might want them! We all decided chicken eggs sound more delicious than ant eggs and covered them back up before migrating to the pavilion.
We’ve settled into our daily routine and quickly lined up our backpacks and took out our snacks before lining up to wash our hands. We discovered that if we all eat our snacks without getting up to wander around or climb on rocks, we’ll have more time for hiking and nature exploration. We counted each other’s snacks and talked about our preference of eating fruits versus veggies and came to the conclusion that we all really like to eat fruit for snack. We skipped coloring and moved right on to rock scrambling after we cleaned up snack, eager to show our friends our new skills and the best places to climb. We noticed that we have one smooth rock that we can gently slide down and that the others are too rough—we had to scoot our way off them! Once we had our fill of fun, we decided to investigate the apple trees and observed that two apple trees had little red apples, while one tree had larger, mostly green apples. The green apples were like little bug hotels, we saw holes and lots of insect activity inside of them, not the best ones for humans to eat…
We made one more tiny trek before embarking on our hike and engaged our sense of touch to explore Staghorn sumac. Some of us remarked that it felt cozy as we rubbed the soft, golden, velvety twigs. The newer ends of the twigs were nice and cozy, while the older branches felt and looked like regular sticks! We also touched the fuzzy red berries and learned that you can make sumac lemonade with them. As we were exploring these fun little shrubs, we noticed a strange, light colored lump on one of these twigs and decided to take a closer look. We lightly squished this lump and decided we would keep it to put in a jar and see what happens. Little did we know that we had found a praying mantis ootheca, an egg sac! These eggs will go dormant over the winter and will hatch as temperatures begin to warm in spring. Ms. Aspen found a jar with holes in the lid to keep the ootheca safe outdoors so we can observe and protect it over the next few months.
We dissected a milk weed pod and identified the seeds before talking about today’s weather and discussing just how many critters can call a tree home! Finally, it was time for our grand mushroom hunt, so we took off down the trail in search of fantastic fungi. It didn’t take long before we found giant mushrooms growing on a dead log that felt like velvet and had tiny little pores on the bottom of them. We explored puff ball mushrooms with our feet and watched the spores travel gently on the breeze. These are the equivalent to seeds for some mushrooms! We investigated lichen that looked like a little island, sun shaped fungi and an interesting type of pelt lichen that was dark colored and rubbery before moving on to fort construction and river dredging in the playscape. Our day was full of so much fun and adventure, it was hard to walk away from our projects at the end of class!
Thank you all for another amazing week in the lives of your Knee High Naturalists! We can’t wait to see you next time when we do a deep dive into acorns, beech nuts and the edible tree seeds of Michigan.
