Theme: signs of wildlife
Today was a blast! We first listened to the story, Big Tracks, Little Tracks by Millicent Selsam. We learned how to be real nature detectives by using clues to identify animals around us–even if we cannot see them during class. They leave behind tracks, scat (poop!), feathers and fur, and even pieces of food. We learned a few cool facts today:
Cats pull their claws in when walking, so you will not see them in their tracks
Dogs leave behind claw marks in their tracks
Rabbits hop with their back feet landing in front of their front paws
Racoons have little human-shaped hands
You can listen to the story with your naturalist(s) by clicking the video link below.
Outside, we searched high and low around the Nature Center for signs of wildlife. We found tracks from dogs, squirrels, rabbits, birds, and people. We tried following many of them to see where they led, but the melting snow made this difficult. We were really excited to find rabbit scat near a pile of branches. Looking closely at the branches, we realized that something (perhaps the rabbit?) had nibbled on some of them.
On our journey across the snowy field, we found subnivean tunnels! We talked about these last week. When the snow begins to melt, tunnels used by small animals beneath the snow are revealed. We followed these tunnels around the field to see where the animals might have come from or where they might have gone. Both tunnels led us to a pile of rocks on top of a sandy hill. We concluded that these animals must have burrows beneath the sand where they live throughout winter. On our walk, we also found signs of birds–an old nest and two tiny feathers in the snow. Near the feathers, we also found a spider, which was a surprise. It was not alive, so we buried it under a pile of snow and went on our way.
After “catching bugs” on the Nature Playscape spider web and pretending to be a family of beavers in the beaver lodge, we headed back to the pavilion for craft time. We had so much fun using animal track stamps to tell our own stories of where animals had been and where they were going. We hope to see the animals themselves, not just their tracks and scat, next week!
