We loved playing in the snow today! Our day began with the question “where do animals live in the winter?” Ms. Paige read the book, Over and Under the Snow by Kate Messner, which showed us the secret winter world of animals. Some animals, like snowshoe hares, foxes, and owls are happy living above the snow. Other animals, many of them small (chipmunks, voles, and mice), prefer to live under the snow in tunnels and burrows to stay warm and find food. The cold weather and snow makes it hard for a frog’s body to stay warm and for bears to find food, so they sleep during the winter. We learned that this is called hibernation.
Before heading outside, we spent some time at the fossil sensory table in the Nature Center. Ms. Paige and Ms. Rachel taught us all about Petoskey Stones and other fossils, like brachiopods, which look like little clams. We learned that Michigan used to be completely under warm water (we did not have snow then!) and that bright corals and small critters lived in the water. Now, they are found as rocks. We even found a trilobite, which looks kind of like a giant roly-poly!
Outside, we found a surprise at the pavilion. A chickadee had flown in and could not find its way out with the clear plastic sides pulled down. Ms. Paige had to shoo it out! We found a couple dog tracks in the snow, so we decided to follow them for our hike this morning. The only problem was that the snow was patchy and we quickly lost track of where the dog had gone. We continued on and sure enough, we found matching prints in the sand! We continued farther, where we discovered that the dog had gone up the same stairs we were going down. On the stairs, we also found squirrel and rabbit tracks! We had so much fun hiking together, that we had to hustle back to the Nature Center when it was time to go home.
