Hello to one and all, welcome back to the best nature program of all! Slip on your mittens, bring along a pumpkin for chuckin’ and join us for a day in the lives of your Knee High Naturalists.
A beautiful and crispy fall morning welcomed us to class, with frosty leaves sparkling in the sun. We have come to the conclusion that our bug bonanzas in the morning have come to end, with a grand total of two very sluggish roly-poly’s found under a big log. Instead, we searched for the most perfect leaves we could find to begin leaf crown construction! While our project will take a lot longer that we expected, we’ll continue to gather the most beautiful leaves around in hopes of having the most lovely crowns in all the land! With the chill lingering beneath the shade of the trees, we were quick to sing our Good Morning song and collaborate for the day ahead. We decided who would be pulling the wagon at the beginning and end of class before setting off for the pavilion.
Once in the pavilion, we found the warmest table and set up a sweet little snack area before exploring our little pumpkins. One of our friends even had pumpkin seeds for snack today—what a perfect way to kick off our pumpkin exploration! As we snacked, we chatted about carving pumpkins, Halloween plans and what we know about bats. One of our friends said they eat mosquitos, another said they come out at night and another said that they were furry—we seemed to know a lot already! We took a vote and decided to read a silly book called Bats at the Beach by Brian Lies and had so much fun listening and looking at all the silly things the bats did. We saw bats carrying umbrellas and picnic baskets, surfing, eating bug filled marshmallows and even sitting around a campfire, we couldn’t stop giggling! Once we were done with our book, we explored a preserved bat and its skeleton and made so many awesome observations. We noticed that its ears were almost as big as its head so it can hear and find it’s food better using echolocation. We also observed that its fingers were longer than all of ours and they even have tiny little thumbs! We noticed its furry belly, little teeth and feet made perfectly for hanging with.
We finished our snack and eagerly made our way over to the little pumpkins and squmpkin waiting for us. We made observations about their colors, shapes and weights, noticing that the tiniest pumpkins had the most texture while the biggest pumpkin was very smooth. The biggest pumpkin was actually a squmpkin, a pumpkin that cross pollinated with a squash in Ms. Aspen’s garden, it looked very silly! We counted the pumpkins and noticed we only had five, so one of our friends found the tiniest pumpkin of all and brought it over so we could all have our own. We hypothesized that pumpkins would probably float, but only if their guts were removed…so we grabbed a cone, filled it with water and put this to the test! It turns out that all of our pumpkins floated without anything being removed. We talked about the reason pumpkins have stems before making our way over the big tunnel where our pumpkin chuckin’ would begin.
As we all lined up with our little pumpkins in our hands, we guessed at what might happen and what types of pumpkins would be more likely to break open first. Some of us thought the smallest pumpkins would crack first because they seemed so fragile—one friend even suggested we save the smallest pumpkin because it was just too cute to throw! We took turns and watched with anticipation as each pumpkin was dropped or chucked from the tunnel, bouncing and rolling through the grass as they landed. We discovered that the biggest pumpkins cracked the easiest, but still didn’t break open. Our tiny pumpkins seemed unharmed after their first falls! We all went back up and tried again. Much to our dismay, none of our pumpkins busted right open! One friend decided to try prying their pumpkin open with a stick until someone else suggested the leave the stick inside the pumpkin and give it one last throw. This was the ticket! The pumpkin cracked open even more so we could simply peel it right open and discovered lots of slimy seeds and cold, squishy guts on the inside.
We finally cut everyone else’s open and found the tiniest little seeds we’ve ever seen, so excited and so proud. Some of us scooped out our seeds to plant, while others worked on carving and some of us decided to save our pumpkins and take them home for planting! After our exploration was finished, we took a short walk to disperse our pumpkin pieces for local critters and to plant our little seeds. We ended the day searching for another praying mantis ootheca (egg sac) to no avail and playing with a ball, practicing our communication and gross motor skills. As always, the day ended too quick and it was time for us to head home.
Thank you all for another wonderful week in the lives of your Knee High Naturalists! We hope you have a Happy Halloween and look forward to seeing you next time when we learn about Magical Migrations!
