Winter/Spring Knee High Naturalists - Week 6 (Monday)

theme: nature detectives

Today was the first day of spring! We listened to the story, You Can Be a Nature Detective by Peggy Kochanoff. Ms. Paige could not find a video recording of the book to share with you this week. This story was full of cool nature mysteries, like why leaves change color and mushrooms grow overnight, which butterflies and moths various caterpillars turn into, and how to tell the difference between different frog calls. Now that it is spring, we hope to see frogs emerging around the Nature Center soon! Click this link to see and listen to common Michigan frogs. We will hear lots of bullfrogs and green frogs along our trails this spring and summer!

After snack, we used egg cartons, markers, and stamps to create our very own treasure boxes before hitting the trails to explore. As nature detectives, we searched high and low for signs of spring. On our way down the trail, we even noticed a small “river” of melting snow flowing through the mud. We decided to follow it to see where it was flowing to, but all of a sudden it disappeared! The soil was changing in front of our eyes–what was once wet and muddy became dry and sandy. The “river” must have seeped into the soil. At the top of the hill where there is still snow, the ground must be too frozen for the water to soak in, so it flows downhill toward warmer and drier ground.

At the Rock Beach on Fox Den trail, we noticed lots of plants starting to appear! We also searched for rocks of every size, shape, and color. We enjoy getting the rocks wet to see how their patterns and colors change. Sometimes this is a cool way to notice Petoskey Stones and other fossils. Some of us also noticed that different sizes of rocks make different sounds when thrown into the Boardman River! We spent some time making music together before it was time to hike back to the Nature Center with our treasures. We are so happy it is spring!