Hello to one and all, welcome back to the best nature program of all! Tie on your paint smock, pull on your creative hat and join us for a day in the lives of your Knee High Naturalists.
A warm, winter morning welcomed us to class, inviting us to play! Always eager anglers these days, we quickly got our fishing poles out and began casting, targeting our favorite fish. As we reeled them in today, we worked on identifying our catches. We got many, many northern pikes and muskies—notoriously hard fish to catch! We reeled in brown trout and brook trout, discussing how they call the Boardman-Ottoway River home, too. We learned that some fish need cold, fast moving water to live their best lives and some live in lakes that get nice and warm in the summer. Feeling like we needed a challenge, we began to step farther back and aim at our favorite fish—our hand-eye coordination is getting better! One of our friends even gathered all of the fish we caught and put them onto a snow-fire to cook for snack. This reminded us that we were very hungry, so we packed up our gear, had our morning meeting and made our way to the pavilion.
As we pushed and pulled the wagon through the snow, one of our friends was sending extra oomph’s from the back to support our other friends—we have the best naturalists in our class! We lined all of our backpacks up, took off our mittens and waited patiently for our turn to wash our hands. We took our snack to the warmest picnic table and dug in, ready for a good book. Today we all voted to read Welcome to the Ice House by Jane Yolen. As we read, we became very curious about arctic animals and their special adaptations, so we took mini research breaks to learn more!
We talked about Lynx and their special paws that help them walk on top of the snow silently as they hunt for their food, they looked so cuddly. We then had a discussion about polar bears after noticing the polar bear in the book was “trapped” on his iceberg. We learned that polar bears can swim and even hold their breath for up to three minutes if they’re chasing down their food in the water—we can’t believe that such a big animal can swim! We were also very intrigued with killer whales and what their favorite foods are…it turns out that they have over 100 foods they like to eat including sharks, seals, salmon, even sea birds and and squid! The next animal that fascinated us all is the walrus, one of us even wondered out loud why they have so big tusks and what they use them for. This specific naturalist then asked if we thought they might pull themselves onto the ice with their tusks—they do! Their tusks never stop growing and they’ll even use them to keep breathing holes open in the ice, too. The last animal we were curious about was caribou and why they migrate in the summer. We learned that caribou migrate to safe calving grounds in the summer where it’s safer to have their babies and there’s plenty of food!
After snack and reading, some of us went out to make rock slides and practice climbing snowy mountains while others stayed behind to color and practice tracing their names. Eventually, we all decided we were ready to put our artist hats on, so we gathered in the pavilion and discussed today’s weather before heading out. We headed to the playscape and set up our studio with glasses of snow paint and paint brushes nestled in the snow. We took turns using our favorite colors and helped Ms. Aspen decorate a very soft snow turtle—he’s decorated with paint splatter of our favorite colors and we had so much fun painting this way! Eventually we decided that we also wanted to paint Valentines pictures for our families, so we popped inside the nature center to grab extra paper. We took another mini break to learn all about Northern Pike after catching so many of them at the beginning of class. We learned that they are predators who hunt other fish and tiny animals to eat, that’s why they have such big teeth! We even observed that the roof of their mouth is covered in smaller, but very sharp teeth that help grab onto its food so it doesn’t swim away from them.
Ready for the last leg of our journey, we headed back outside, collected icicles and worked on our Valentines before heading home. We dried them off as best as we could and met our families out front, excited to tell them about our days!
Thank you all for another fantastic week in the lives of your Knee High Naturalists. We look forward to seeing you next week when we become snow scientists!
