Hello one and all, welcome back to the best nature program of all! Today we went on a giant journey that took us by the river, a waterfall, many mud puddles and even a flooded area for us to splash a play—zip up your rain jacket, pull on your galoshes and dive right in to learn about a soggy day in the life of your Knee High Naturalists!
Our friends arrived excited to greet each other, spring break made us miss one another! We didn’t waste any time and got right to work, playing with our shovels and rakes to move lots of dirt. Looking for bugs, finding perfect sticks, does life get better than this? With big plans for our small time together, we decided to get moving and take advantage of the weather. We sang our Good Morning song with gusto to spare and headed to the pavilion to further prepare.
Today, we continued to learn about different type of rocks and fossils. We learned that almost all rocks are made up of minerals, and that the Earth has different types of layers like the crust and the core! We got to explore cool rocks and fossils, learning about shells, mollusks, crystals and more. While we always love a cool rock, we wanted to make sure we had time for our big walk! We washed our hands and ate snack pretty quick so we could take off on our big adventure and experience nature’s magic. Once we were all done and ready for fun, we gathered our gear and set off for a hike to places far and near.
Down the big hill we went, stopping by the river as we made our way to Bear Den—a location we’ve been trying for three weeks to reach! We saw a wonderful little waterfall, made our way over a new bridge and discovered a whole new section of Jack’s Creek that we haven’t seen before this week. As we picked our way over ninja roots, we splashed through puddles and were having a hoot. Finally, Bear Den was in sight, but Ms. Miranda said something was not right! Bear Den became Bear Pond, the recent rain made it gain a lot of water—while we all had on rain boots, we wished they were taller. Ms. Aspen waded into the giant puddle and rescued our cones who became boats that we learned would float! So we splashed and we played, we fished for our cones, through sticks and decided to stay. Once everyone got a little too wet from all the silly fun, we decided it was probably time to be done.
We began our trek back with tired legs and wet gear that made it feel like our walk took years—with such little legs, we walked so far, Ms, Miranda and Ms. Aspen were so proud of us and said we were stars! We took our time and continued to pick rocks, running through puddles and getting slightly wet socks. We found a very cool log covered in lichen and brought it back to check out, we were so surprised when a roly poly rolled out! We learned that lichen is a made of both algae and fungus and there were different types like Pixie cups and British soldiers in front of us. As always, the time to go home came so soon, we packed up our gear and were ready to go home at noon.
We would like to thank you all for a spectacular and slightly soggy day in the life of your Knee High Naturalists! We had so much fun catching up after spring break and look forward to seeing you next week to learn about wiggling worms and other incredible insects!
