Hello to one and all, welcome back to the best nature program of all! Grab your nets, a trusty bucket and hop along to read about an amphibious adventure in the life of your Knee High Naturalists…
Today we all soaked up the bright sun and warm temperatures, coming to class with less and less layers. We created a special garden today, with flowers and snakes who were ready to play. Purple, green, red and blue, we love every color and nature, too! It didn’t take long for all of our naturalists to arrive, ready to celebrate Earth Day by finding plants and animals that are thriving. We sang our Good Morning song all together again, it’s hard to believe that class is coming to an end. We decided to take our morning meeting to the sun, so we sat on the blanket and class begun.
We learned that reptiles are born with lungs, lay eggs on the land and have scales all over their skin—snakes are one example and lizards are their kin! Amphibians are born with gills, not lungs, lay eggs and water and have slimy, wet skin for water based fun—frogs and salamanders fall into this family! Both reptiles and amphibians are cold blooded vertebrates, this means that they have backbones and have to rely on the environment around them to regulate their body temperature. This is why we always see turtles, frogs, snakes and lizards laying in the sun, to keep themselves nice and warm!
In true cold blooded practice, we swarmed to the picnic table in full sun to eat our snack until it was done. Knowing we were going on a big reptile and amphibian hike, we decided to skip coloring to search for all of the animals we like. We made our way through the hardwood forest, down the steps to wetland and over the boardwalks until we came across a snake in the grass and knew we were here at last. We learned to be quiet and be slow when looking for things you want to catch, not watch go! We all laid down to look into the water, trying hard to find things that hopped, croaked or slithered. It took a little while but we learned a great trick, just look for frog’s eyes if you want to find them quick!
Suddenly there was a frog here, a frog there, there were frogs everywhere! We found green frogs and leopard frogs in the water and on logs. Big and little frogs alike used their camouflage so well we almost missed them on our hike! We learned how to catch them without spooking them, we learn how to hold them without squishing them and became experts at identifying things that hop and ribbit! All too soon, it was time for us to head back, we had hiked so far and needed retrace our tracks. Over the boardwalk we went, up a hill, over Mini Mac and up a big set of steps until at last, we were back to the pavilion. We quickly packed our bags and got ready to leave, our families seemed to arrive in a breeze!
Thank you all so much for a fantastic and froggy day in the life of your Knee High Naturalists, we can’t believe next week is our last session together! We look forward to seeing you all next week to learn about the life cycles of plants and to celebrate the growth of your Knee High Naturalists!
