Hello one and all, welcome back to the best nature program of all! Be sure to settle in with a cup of cocoa and your favorite blanket to learn about a day in the life of your Knee High Naturalists.
We began our morning with a new blanket of fresh snow, eagerly painting trees, hearts, snowmen and bugs to our heart’s content. Colorful snow is our favorite kind! We dug up our pieces of art to create speckled snow all around, which we then investigated with magnifying glasses. We even realized that our friends eyes looked HUGE through our magnifying glasses and had so much fun laughing and taking turns observing each other. We talked about our day and decided we wanted to have some sled play before singing the loudest version of our Good Morning song yet! While we tried with all of our might to push and pull the cart to the pavilion, Ms. Aspen had to take over as we made our way through the very deep snow—we couldn’t resist helping push the wagon, we’re so helpful!
Our picnic tables were littered with mittens and gloves as we huddled around the warmest table and dug into snack. Our friendships are getting stronger every week, we love to laugh together as we munch and crunch! We took breaks to warm our hands by the heaters as we snacked and colored, getting more energy from every little burst of heat. A first for this session, we all colored together as we continued to laugh and make silly faces—we love being with each other in the same places! As rabbits and bears were colored, pink and blue snowflakes adorning our pages, we realized that our favorite snow hill grew bigger over the week and we rushed to begin sliding down and climbing all around it. We found snowballs bigger than our heads and as small as strawberries left by the snowplow, we gathered them all and began to make Mount Snowball! Before long it was time for us to become Friendly Foresters, we took one last warming break before heading into the woods and learned how sign the word tree in American Sign Language (see picture at bottom of post to practice at home).
We got to use a special tool to help identify trees as we took our small hike. We took turns holding up different tree cards, studiously comparing the bark on the card to the trees. We touched the bark and made observations about shapes or designs that we saw. We identified an Ash tree, noticing the diamonds in its rough bark before moving on down the trail. We learned that there are trees called evergreens, like pine trees, who stay forever green during the year! We also learned the very big word deciduous for trees who decide to lose their leaves every fall. We learned how to identify Red Pines by looking at their pinkish-red bark, we identified an Aspen tree by its smooth, grey bark dotted with black and found Paper Birch trees where we peeled a little sliver of bark away to understand where their name came from. While we trained hard to become foresters during our hike, we played even harder once we arrived at the playscape. We investigated the den made by a boat, crawled into our beaver dam, became snow spiders and rode insects like dragonflies and butterflies before we decided to sled. We rode down with our siblings and our friends, we went down the hill backwards and even fit three friends on one sled! Some of us took breaks to simply lay in the snow and absorb the sun as it peeked through the clouds. We raced to get in as many sled runs and log rolls as we could before it was time for our families to pick us up, eager to warm our cold toes and noses.
We want to thank you all for another fantastic day in the lives of your Knee High Naturalists! We hope you have a wonderful week and we look forward to seeing you next time when we focus on our super senses of hearing.
