Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Memorial Day Weekend Butterflies

This weekend was just chock full of wild animal and plant encounters. The first of which was Saturday, when we got to spend time with a friend of mine who is a lepidoptery (butterfly and moth) fanatic. We pulled out our butterfly nets:


And got lucky!

That's him! My lepidopterist friend :)

We caught more butterflies in the sunlight as opposed to the shade, and near flowers especially. They are trickier than they look, we saw many more butterflies than we were able to catch. My favorite was the spring azure, which is tiny and baby blue in color.

Here are some pictures of a tiger swallowtail we caught. Note that my friend, as a lepidopterist's daughter, has been trained in how to hold butterflies without hurting them. No butterflies were harmed in the making of this post!


 See the lovely tail and stripes on each wing! If you look closely you
can see its long tongue (proboscis) is curled near its head

When we let the butterfly go it flew off really quickly and very high in the air. Looking at how it flies, we're lucky we caught it at all!

Friday, May 25, 2012

After School: Animals

In our "From the Ground Up" after school program, we've talked about 1) the soil and how it lays foundation for plants, 2) the plants themselves, and now 3) we're talking about what the plants do for animals and vice-versa.

We saw standing dead trees ("snags") and discussed how they provide different habitat for animals than fallen dead trees (for example, birds make their homes in cavities on snags.) 

We talked about detritus (matter that is no longer living) and the organisms that break that down. This really shows that worms and fungi are crucial to our ecosystems, because otherwise the nutrients locked away in detritus wouldn't be made available for new plants.

We looked for wildlife signs (and frogs) in this stream.

We identified some mast trees (trees that produce food for animals, such as white pine cones or beech nuts.) And once we did this, we had pretty much all the vocabulary to play the wildlife BINGO game I designed for just this occasion!

Looking for items on their cards

We did have to discuss what "invertebrate" meant, and what examples of behavior we saw count as defense mechanisms. Which was perfect because the point of this activity was to raise questions and creative ideas. For example, the little lady used herself to fill the categories of omnivore, two-legged animal, and mammal. 

She asked for a hard surface to write on,
I told her where to find one.

At one point the little lady pointed at me and said "I see a two-legged mammal right there!" At which her friend pointed at both of us, saying "I see two!" Our third friend, who had wandered off a bit looking for snags, called back "I see three, and they're laughing like crazy people!"

As we walked back to the school all three of the girls looked for a black birch tree so they could chew on the end of a twig and taste the sweet wintergreen like we did last week.

Monday, May 21, 2012

Local Motion Hike

On Saturday I led a family nature walk with Local Motion at Ethan Allen Park in Burlington, VT. Three lovely families joined us, with their five charming children. I knew I was with a great group when right off one little boy pointed at a Norway maple tree and said "Maple!" He later showed me that he knows oak as well, while looking at a dried leaf on the path.

Maple! 

First off we rolled over a log and found a spider, a worm, and a millipede. We also found and identified some poison ivy before we left the path, so everyone would know what not to touch. There aren't many things in Vermont woods that will hurt you, we are very lucky in that regard!

Examining a millipede

Right next to the poison ivy we found a sprig of jewelweed. This plant is so very useful, the juices in its leaves can even help poison ivy rashes, so you don't have to wait till you get home to start treating it if you're exposed. In my observation jewelweed tends to grow near the plants that cause the harm they can fix, like poison ivy and nettles. Nature is pretty amazing like that!

Pale jewelweed (old photo, it is not in bloom yet this time of year.)

Along the hike we looked at acorn caps from oak trees, and saw a squirrel that might be responsible for eating the acorn out of the cap. We went on a mini scavenger hunt and collected lots of dandelions. We also planted many dandelion seeds with our personal wind power!

Scavenger hunt and dandelion picking in a field

At a very exciting moment in the day, I spotted and caught a toad in the woods. Everyone got a chance to touch it with one finger.

Toad!

Then we finally made it up to the tower, I was so proud of how all those tiny legs walked the whole way. We had a nice rest and enjoyed the view before heading back down.

If you are interested, I have another post on a hike in Ethan Allen Park, with tower photos, that you can read here. I also talk more about jewelweed in a post from a hike up Mount Philo last fall, that post is here.

Saturday, May 19, 2012

After School: Plants

For my after school program this week we took a good look at the plants around us. One of my girls taught us all she knows about ferns (she is very astute!) We looked at the repeating patterns in the fronds, how each segment looks like a miniature of the whole fern itself. And we saw the curled fiddleheads of some young ferns, but none were the right type to eat (you don't want to eat the fuzzy ones!)

(Not one of my personal photos, I got excited talking with the girls 
and forgot to take out my camera...)

Then we moved up to the trees. I made up a simplified dichotomous key to try out and the girls seemed to really enjoy using it. I explained to them that it's like a "Choose your own adventure" book. If you see a certain characteristic on a tree, you move to a certain question which eventually leads you to the name of the tree you're most likely looking at (the ending of the adventure you chose!)

A fun dichotomous key!

This is a great activity for the 8-9 year olds I'm working with in this group. As for the actual key itself that I made, I'm planning on making some edits to it before I use it again. I realize it'd be easier for children if there are more action verbs at the beginning of each choice:

  • LOOK at the branch, is it...
  • SCRATCH and SNIFF the twig, does it smell like wintergreen? (Then it is black or yellow birch! I'd have to have it lead to a question about the color of the bark.)
The hour went by really quickly, I could talk trees all day! The girls particularly liked learning about the black birch and cherry trees because of their distinctive smells (a cherry twig will smell a bit almondy and I think it smells yucky). We even peeled back the bark and tasted the birch, it was delicious! Coming out of the woods each girl told me her favorite tree. One said moose maple, the second birch, and the third beech. I guess the trees we saw made quite an impression!

Next Monday we're going to talk about the animals we can find in the woods at our school.

Monday, May 14, 2012

Activities for the younger child

I have been working a lot with school-aged children recently, so a reader asked if I could give advice on explayration activities for toddlers/preschool children. Depending on group size and location things'll be a little different but here's one lesson I'd imagine up for 3 to 4 year olds.

If I were out in the woods with a small group of preschoolers, the most important thing would be to keep them interested and active. I like to start out with a learning-type activity, so I might let them run around and gather as many different types of leaves as they can find in one minute. I'd then encourage each child to tell me what makes one leaf different from others.

I prefer we collect leaves that are already on the ground but 
there is something VERY different about these leaves!

I'd have them save their findings for an arts and crafts activity, in this instance possibly a leaf-rubbing so the kids can take home an impression of their leaves while "leaving the nature out in nature." Since this requires a hard, flat surface it might be better inside, with a promise to return the leaves to outside when they have finished. This all helps work on observation and motor skills. As the kids press their leaves under the paper and pass the side of a crayon over it, they will be able to see more details of the leaves, like their veins, so this may prompt more discussion. I also like to encourage making patterns out of leaves, using more than one type of leaf in the art project, and switching colors. One of my kids used one color to rub the outline of the leaf, and then another to color the leaf in, it was a cool effect.

For another activity, I remember when I was this age I loved building "fairy homes." I used to use twigs, rocks, mud, anything I could find to make little houses in my backyard. I'd even find ready-made holes in stumps and attempt to make them nicer and prettier. This could be a good way to experiment with different types of building materials and to imagine how animals build their homes (especially how they do it without thumbs). Over time you can see what makes a home last out in the wild based on which of your fairy homes survive the wind and the rain.

Here's a pre-made fairy home we later furnished with some pine needles

A garden is another great way for kids of this age to connect with nature, even if it's just a small bed or a flower in a recycled yogurt cup on the windowsill. This is especially true if they get to see the whole process, including adding their own food to the compost pile, and getting to pick up worms they find. It's my personal opinion that there's a lot more to be gained by getting to touch things like worms than there is by keeping your hands clean. Hands will get dirty anyway, and the good thing about hands is they can be washed! (If you're extra squeamish, bring moist towlettes)

If you want to start your own compost pile, composting 101 is a great site for tips. Remember, if a compost pile is done right, it shouldn't smell bad at all! As long as you can put in a little effort there's no down side :)

Sunday, May 13, 2012

Teepee

After some spring yardwork I found myself with several fine examples of staghorn sumac saplings. The kids and I used these to practice our building skills. I shaved some of the twigs to provide some bark strings to tie the saplings together.

Being a good example of how to safely handle a knife.

The little lady and the young gentleman tied the saplings together to get our initial frame. It took a bit of trial and error to get their technique down, but they got pretty good by the end.

Our initial frame

We added more branches, as well as braces on the bottom. It seemed pretty sturdy...until we tried to pile on one too many pine boughs (with needles) for "walls." After it tipped we could see the points at which it was weak. I think we should have waited longer for the green strips of bark to dry and have a stronger hold on the saplings before we added weight. Oh well, we try, we learn, we try again! 

I gave the kids pretty free reign on this one. I did all the knife-work and gave them some tips, but when it came down to what materials to place where, it was all up to their problem-solving abilities to figure out what might work. I think the little lady learned a bit about not taking shortcuts when some of her more hastily done ties came undone. The young gentleman, well, he was climbing trees for much of the building process, but he was excellent at choosing which sapling to add next when he was helping :) We kept the saplings to try again, so we'll all have learned from these efforts and hopefully we'll have an awesome hand-built play shelter in our yard this summer!

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

After School: Soil

Yesterday was day #1 of Explayration's first after-school program! Over the month we'll be working our way "From the Ground Up" so the first lesson was on soil. The kiddos had so many questions about bedrock and groundwater, I was impressed by how much they already knew and how interested they were - soil really only appeals to a select audience. But we made sure to keep it interesting, digging around in the dirt to see the soil profile, brushing back leaves to see if we can find the holes where worms pop up to eat. It was a good, fun hour. At the end we tested our new knowledge with this soil horizon matching page:

Can you get the correct answers? My girls did :)