Sunday, February 26, 2012

Animal Tracks

Four Winds for February was on animal tracks. We had a very fun time with this one! I made shirts for Jessica and I that had "muddy" animal tracks all over them. It made for a great introduction, the kids loved guessing what animal made each track. For a trick question, I put a bicycle track on my shirt, because people are animals and can make tracks too!

That's a bear and a dog on Jessica, and a grey squirrel running down from my shoulder.

We got to do a lot of fun activities, including a slide show of animal tracks in snow (since we still didn't have any.) We also showed them a poster detailing how following tracks can tell you a story of what happened, even though you weren't around to see it yourself.

The kids had the most fun following animal movement patterns. Some animals gallop, some bound, others waddle, and still others walk. We showed the kids how to do each and let them practice.

Here the student is following a walking pattern.

The other very popular activity was a people-tracking activity. We all took a crayon rubbing of the bottom of our shoes, then we had the kids guess which "track" matched which person's shoe. They had an unfair advantage with the adult shoes: size!

The teacher posted more pictures on her classroom blog.

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Ethan Allen

Yesterday we decided the weather was too nice, it was time time to take this kids for a hike. We have a lot of plans for exploring different Vermont mountains when the spring actually comes, so we were excited to get started by taking even a short hike now. We went to Ethan Allen Park in Burlington.

The new tree of this hike was black cherry: we saw two excellent specimens very soon after we entered the park. The bark of the black cherry tree is very distinctive, making it easy to identify even at this time of year (before the leaves are out.) Some people say the bark reminds them of burnt potato chips. Can you see it?


Just in case you don't have me around to confirm: cherry trees also have a distinctive, almondy smell (not a pleasant one though) if you scratch-and-sniff a living twig. And the black cherry leaves have a brown fuzz running down the center of the underside of the leaf. This is a useful identification tool once the leaves come out. (I'll get you a good picture of that in a later post, promise!)

As we walked along, the little lady pointed out to us an American beech tree that she recognized from our Snake Mountain hike. She informed us that she'd been showing beech trees to her classmates at school, telling them how they can know what kind of tree it is. She remembered that beech trees don't loose their leaves as easily as other deciduous trees, so often you'll see them clinging to their leaves all winter long. When I reminded her of the smooth grey bark, she went to a nearby witch hazel plant, saying, "This has smooth bark, is it a beech?" So I showed her the most distinctive part of a beech tree: the bud.


Some people will call this a "cigar bud" to help them remember. See how long and pointy it is? It almost looks like a thorn when you look quickly. And the light brown is a distinctive feature as well.

Back to the hike: one of the nice things about Ethan Allen Park is that it has a tower! During the summer you can go up the stairs and get a great view, right now it's locked up for the winter.

Still a pretty cool tower! We're checking out a white pine though.

As we left the woods, the sun was just starting to set. A perfect after school hike, just in time to get home for dinner :)

Saturday, February 18, 2012

Snowflakes

I never posted the January Four Winds lesson! It was on snowflakes. My co-teacher was savvy enough to have collected a cooler full of snow during a brief period in which we had some, so we were able to let the students do some investigations. One of these was predicting how much water would be left when an amount of snow melted. All of the students correctly hypothesized that the water level would be lower than the snow level, because of the air in the snow, but from that point on prediction accuracies varied...

We also made paper snowflakes and looked at snow with magnifiers in order to draw our observations.

There's the young gentleman looking scientific!

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Owl Walk

Last night Astrid (from Lunches Fit For a Kid) and I went for a night hike in Monkton. We were led by two very knowledgeable naturalist friends of mine who brought owl call recordings to attempt to entice the real, wild owls to call back. We called for saw whet, barred, and great horned owls in that order, which is order of size from smallest to biggest. The smaller owls will not call after they hear the call of a larger owl, since a larger type of owl will act as a predator toward a smaller type of owl.

The saw whet owl is very small, but here is is pictured 
as the larger of the two owls (with a sparrow owl)

Barred owl (left) and great horned owl (right)

Unfortunately the weather conditions were not favorable to us hearing owls (too cold and windy after a nice warm spell) but my friends taught us many interesting facts about owls along the walk. For example I had no idea the feathers near an owl's feet can act like a cat's whiskers, sensing minute vibrations that can help the owl catch its tiny rodent prey! See the feathers on the feet of the saw whet owl in the picture above?

The place we hiked was Raven Ridge Natural Area, which is open to the public. I'd never been there before, despite living in Monkton at one point. I'll have to check it out in the daylight and in the spring, I've heard it's lovely in bloom. Anyone want to come with me?

Monday, February 6, 2012

Rocks and Ice

It's around the time of year for certain creatures to begin stirring again. I walked along a little stream behind my house today in hopes of finding some spring salamanders. I turned over many rocks to no avail, but it is still early days! I'll go out again soon and may have better luck.

I did find some very interesting critters (actual term: benthic macroinvertebrates) under those rocks though. Most were different kinds of insect larva, and scurried very quickly once I removed their shelter. I did get a few good shots, like this aquatic sowbug:

(the one critter who was not an insect larvae)

Then I hiked through the woods, where the most prominent finds were fungi, like this cluster of last-year's mushrooms:

see the holes where the spores were released?

As I neared the swamp that my brook pours into, I started seeing more and more evidence of our beaver population. The little lady mentioned wanting to see what a beaver-downed tree looks like (how you can tell it from a human-downed tree.) I guess I won't have to go far to show her!

I just love the way the remaining stump looks, with the wavy pattern of the gnaw marks. 

And finally I made it out to the swamp. I was glad after such a warm winter (and on a very warm day) to find it completely iced over. And the ice was THICK.


Walking on the ice was a little unnerving, the top layer was kinda slushy from a very sunny day. I wouldn't have gone out on it except there were some very nice ice-fishermen nearby (proving the ice was thick enough for human weight and providing security that someone was there to fish me out if it wasn't.)

This fishing hole was a few days old.



I love the way this bubble looks under the ice, with the crack in the ice it's a little like a full moon over a mountain.




Thursday, February 2, 2012

Nature Games 3

I really love these next two games. I was introduced to them only recently.

The first is an adaptation on Blind Man's Bluff entitled Star Nosed Mole. The mole is blindfolded (because moles are blind and thus use their other senses to detect prey) and the rest of the children were worms trying to avoid being caught by the mole. I joined in this game, though it was slower-paced than tag, it was much more nerve-wracking. I watched a student avoid capture by simply ducking under an outstretched arm, centimenters from a solid tag. I personally hid behind my co-worms when the tagger was close, so they'd be tagged first and the mole would go look else-where!

A star-nosed mole!

The next game we played that day was Squirrel. We each had 20 items, in this case black beans, to store for winter. Half of us were red squirrels who bury their chache all in one location, the other half were grey squirrels who make several different hidey-holes. Then we had to collect food, not from our own store but seeing if we could locate other squirrels' food. We had 31 seconds to find food, to represent the 31 days in January. I went hungry that month :( After a few more months we were allowed to return to our own stores of food. I returned only to find that all of mine (I was a grey squirrel) had been found and pillaged. I didn't have a very successful survival technique I suppose, but the kids were much more lucky. And we all had a great time!

A red squirrel enjoying one of its finds