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.

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 :)

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!

Cones!

The Four Winds lesson this month was on cones. We described and discussed different cones, and played cone-related matching games (such as types of cones to the branches of the trees they came from). We spiced up the lesson this time by bringing pine cone necklaces for everyone (using the cones collected in previous posts.)

(See the young gentleman in the middle?)

We also helped illustrate conifer tree facts by taking the kids outside and having them show us the circumference and height of the largest trees with their armspans. This was a lesson for us in group coordination!

Measuring an 'average' wingspan 

Stretching out our arms to the fullest to reach the length of the tallest redwood tree

At the end of the lesson we sent each kid home with a note for their parents. The note suggested they help the kids spread peanut butter on the cone on their necklace, roll it in birdseed, hang it by the thread, and watch to see if any birds come to have a snack!

If you want to see more pictures, you can visit the blog the classroom teacher keeps: she wrote an entry on our visit.

Leaves!

Today I went to the young gentleman's kindergarten class to do a lesson on leaves. It was a pre-designed lesson from the Four Winds Nature Institute, being taught this month in participating schools all across the Northeast. My fellow volunteer for this classroom, who I met one hour prior to the lesson, is a very lovely mother of one of the young gentleman's classmates, and a doctor! It was a little odd teaching someone else's lesson plan, I'm getting used to making my own at this point. Still, we had a lot of fun with it. Adding our own spice, we put fake leaves in our hair, having the children guess what we'd come to talk to them about today.

Investigating leaves

The kids had a great time. During the introduction, when asked what leaves do, one child answered that "They make oxygen, which goes into your mouth, to your chest, then to your heart!". I love it when children surprise you with a tidbit they picked up and kept.