Hello one and all, welcome back to the best nature program of all! Slip into your rain boats, pull on your mittens and join us for a day in the lives of your Knee High Naturalists.
The rain broke and the sun came out to welcome us to class this morning, leaving behind the sweet smell of fall. There’s an especially sweet scent near our morning meeting spot, so we put on detective hats and began investigating. We picked leaves, flower buds and twigs to crush and smell, though we still couldn’t track down the source! We know it doesn’t come from the pine trees, the sumac or the milkweed, what a great mystery, indeed. We’ll continue our investigations again next week, stay tuned! We kept our detective hats on and searched for crawly critters, though the only ones we could find were roly-poly’s. Not even any wiggling worms on such a wet day! We sang our sweet Good Morning song and voted on our snack time book before packing up our wagon and heading to the pavilion.
With the sides down to help keep us warm and dry, we quickly requested that the heaters be turned on high! As we washed our hands and settled in, we felt the heat begin to roll in. Cozy as we crunched and munched, we read a book called Annie and the Wild Animals by Jan Brett. We talked about what types of wild animals we would want for pets and mostly decided that we all looked moose the best! After snack we eagerly colored before moving outside for rock climbing and plane flying. We learned how to make two different types of paper airplanes today and had so much fun watching them fly away! After much running, chasing and jumping, we took a quick break to talk about today’s weather before heading out on an adventure.
We were in search of signs of fall, from very big to very small! We stopped under the great arch and identified all of the animals from raccoons and bears to frogs, woodpeckers, herons and owls. We noticed many trees changing colors and a carpet of fallen leaves throughout the trails. We stopped to explore the Eagle Nest, the beaver dam and the Rocky River before continuing on our way. While in the Rocky River, we found all sorts of interesting rocks that were yellow and orange, pink, red, green, grey! Rocks of all sizes, shapes and textures, we couldn’t pull ourselves away loving our new rock adventure. We found Charlevoix fossils and Petoskey stones, telling tales of long lost oceans covering our state. Eventually, we continued on our way and found signs of a hungry little animal digging for food—there were tiny little holes dug everywhere! We found fallen acorn caps, someone must have come by and eaten the good parts. We wound our way back to the pavilion, very eager to begin volcano construction!
We built our own little volcanoes, creating a volcano village. We patiently helped our friends shape their geologic formations and watched with excitement as each volcano was excavated for baking soda. We took turns scooping baking soda into our own volcanos, coloring our lava green and red. Once everyone was set and ready, we began to pour the secret ingredient (vinegar) into our volcanos! With cheered with excitement as red and green lava rolled out of our volcanos, sometimes eroding away the entire side of our little mountains or breaking through the bottom. We didn’t have enough supplies left for everyone to build another volcano, so we made a mega class volcano with LOTS of baking soda and worked together to pour in the vinegar. We loved the giant eruption and were sad when it finally fizzled out, washing the side of the volcano out as it went. As always, it seemed too soon, but it was time for us to pack up and head home before the next patch of rain rolled in!
Thank you all for another wonderful week in the lives of your Knee High Naturalists, we had so much fun exploring science and geology today! We look forward to seeing you next week when learn about Beautiful Bats and Pumpkins!
