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 :)

Camouflage

April's Four Winds lesson was on camouflage. They provided us with fun activities such as finding "worms" (little pieces of yarn) spread across the lawn. The children had one minute to find as many as they could, using their little bird beaks to collect them. This was supposed to show which color worms were easiest to find, based on how many of each color were collected, but our little birdies were so industrious they caught them all! Still, we discussed which worms they noticed first ;)

The second favorite activity was a matching game. The students had insects cut out of wallpaper patterns, and they had to find the "habitat" (out of wallpaper patterns spread across the room) which provided the best camouflage for their creature.

Our special flair for this month was the hats my co-teacher brought in. Hers was classic green camo, mine was hunter orange. This allowed us to discuss the difference between blending in to hide, or standing out to warn other creatures about a defense mechanism, such as poison or stinky skunk smell. I asked the kids when they had seen hats such as this, I expected at least a few had parents who hunt. However, the answers I received were even more precious. The first was "When my dad goes to Dunkin' Doughnuts!" Others included "When dad goes to work" and "At the dinner table!" This is Vermont after all.

Red Maple

This time of year it's very easy to see where red maple got its name. You can spot the red maple blooming incredibly easily, even from far away. This is a view from the bottom of my parents' driveway:

See the difference where the deciduous trees are RED maples?

 Here's a red maple in the backyard.

Close-up on the flower.

Nests

March's Four Winds lesson was on birds' nests. To add our extra bit of flair Jessica and I showed up with little toy birds perched on our heads. The kiddos just LOVED this.

One of the young gentleman's friends borrowed my bird for a bit

We made one other special addition to the lesson plan. After the puppet show we opened up my laptop and played the bird calls for the types of birds that had been in the show. The kids especially loved the chickadee and phoebe because they say their own names :)

We observed and drew different nests, we matched birds to their nests based on descriptions of how they build them, and finally we got to pretend to be birds and make our own nests!

 Observations!

The young gentleman and friend with their nest.

I think the children had two favorite parts of the nest-building activity. The first was, since they had to pretend to be birds, they could only gather "a beakful" of supplies at a time. We used our index finger and thumb as our little beaks. In between supply runs, they held up their little beaks and displayed some bird calls they had learned - "chick-a-dee-dee-dee!" 

But their real favorite part was most likely getting to eat a chocolate egg out of their nest at the end :)

Backyard Wanderings

We wanted to see what new things are popping up for spring, so we took a short walk in the woods behind our house. We saw a few bright green leaves just starting to emerge, and it's early days, so there will be many more exciting things to post in the weeks to come. Here are some pictures of our adventure! 

The young gentleman was very excited hopping about the rocky stream bed. 

To his credit, he didn't get his feet wet!

 We saw some evidence of benthic macroinvertibrates, like this muddy home.

 Awesome snag!

 This tiny cave is under a muddy overhanging bank. I liked how the water dripping down gave a miniature, less-permanent example of stalagmite and stalactite formation.

 We tried to see if we could place the wood chips we found on the ground back in the woodpecker holes.

 The young gentleman and a GIANT white pine tree

I did see one excellent example for tree ID. I found a white birch (also known as a paper birch) with its characteristic peeling bark:

And right next to it I saw a yellow birch, with its...characteristic peeling bark:

I asked the young gentleman if he thought the trees might be similar. I mentioned how one tree was white, and the other was yellow. "If the white one is a white birch, what might the yellow one be?" "Yellow birch!" "Bingo!"

The branches were all too high for me to show him one of the nicest defining characteristics of a yellow birch - the wintergreen smell when you scratch the bark on a live twig. You can also find that scent on black (sweet) birch, but not on white birch or grey birch.

It was a very fun short walk, I can't wait to see how our little woods change as spring continues to emerge!

Maple Sugaring

On this very warm Thursday I went to the Green Mountain Audubon Center in Huntington, VT with the young gentleman and his class. The kids learned all about maple sugaring.

Our guide, Daniel, taught us that there are two parts to sap that we collect from sugar maple trees: sugar and water. To be more specific: A LOT of water and a little sugar. The water is boiled off in an evaporator so that we're left with the sweet, sweet syrup. It takes about 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of maple syrup.

Looking at the evaporator and all the sweet-smelling steam boiling off

He showed us how they skim off the leaves and bits of other things found in nature that wind up in the sap (but we don't want in the final syrup). Then we got to see how they test the syrup as it boils. He had a hygrometer, which looked a lot like a thermometer with a large, hollow glass bulb at the bottom. If the hygometer sinks to the bottom, then the syrup is too watery. If it floats, the syrup is too thick. They are looking for it to settle halfway in the syrup.

This syrup still needed time to boil off water (the hygrometer sank)

Then we got to taste different grades of syrup. Fancy, medium amber, dark, and grade B. Did you know that different grades are collected at different times of year and under different weather conditions? And it doesn't progress strictly as they year progresses, they can collect medium, then dark, and then back to medium!

Syrup tasting, yum!

(See the American beech in that picture, with its leaves still clinging on at the end of the winter? The young gentleman did, and told one of his friends why it was a beech. That tree surely stuck in his mind from way back when.)

Then we got to see Daniel tap an actual tree! Right down to drilling the hole with his hand drill. It was really cool that even the wood shavings coming off the drill had a drop of sap you could squeeze out. We could tell if a tree was ready to tap because if you can reach all the way around it and touch your hands, that tree is too small. If two friends can reach around it, that tree is ready for one tap. If three friends, then two taps and so on.

This tree was barely too big for the young gentleman and one friend, 

but the third friend closed the gap. I'd put two taps in this tree.

Daniel had showed us an example of the lines that they sometimes use to collect sap. The sap drips from the tree, flows down the line, and straight to the sugar house. But here at the Audubon they use buckets and haul the sap in manually. This is the method we used when my family made syrup when I was a kid :) The children ran around collecting buckets from the trees, till we had a good amount of sap. After Daniel told us the story of how maple syrup was first discovered, he demonstrated the traditional method of syrup-making with the sap we collected!  He placed the sap in a hollowed-out log, and then added hot rocks he pulled straight from the fire. He used deer antlers to transport the rocks.

 With all the rocks in (and a friend blowing away the steam)

 The set-up (he removed the rocks since this was only a demonstration)

 All-in-all a very fun day, I highly suggest it for anyone! The Audubon has much, much more to offer as well, such as hiking trails and a butterfly garden in the summer. I'll have to go back, and take some more friends with me!

Official

My business card came in the mail this week! Please share with anyone who might be interested!