Monday at the Pond

Our focus this week, at the pond, was water.

Some of the questions the children thought of last week were;

What is in the water?

What happens to the water?

Why is grass in the water?

With those questions in mind we started to explore.

The first thing we did was check the water level.

We measured with our feet how far from last weeks sticks, that we laid,

to this week's sticks, that we just put down.

When asked what happen to the water one boy responded 'it evaporated'.

Then we grabbed our equipment.

Nets, magnifying glasses and containers.

 Nets in the water and they quickly found the first bug.

I brought a library book for reference.

 Next we found a really squiggly insect.

 
                                 

A worm was found but the child was quite confidant that it was dead.

But she put it on dry land just in case.

And we continued exploring.

 

 Then one of the parents spotted a clump attached to a blade of grass.

We took a closer look and almost tumbled in.

 But we scooped out the jelly blob and put it in a container.

We think they are salamander eggs.

To finish off the morning we drew our observations.

 

This morning we were able to answer all three questions

from last week and came up with a few more.

Next week we'll focus on bugs.

Using Our Animal Senses

Last Friday we had a visit with Natasha from West Coast Environmental Education Society.  She taught us how to use our animal senses when we are out in the forest.

                 
We learned about different animals and the senses they use to survive.  The mole uses his big claws to dig.  The deer has great ears for hearing.  The eagle has sharp eyes for seeing.  A butterfly uses it’s feet for tasting.  And the bear uses his nose to smell.
          
   With that bit of instruction we were ready to head into the forest behind
                                        our school.
    
                         The first sense we used was smell. 
             Just like a bear we sniffed the sap seeping out of this tree.
                         
         We used our eagle eyes to find cones lying on the ground.
 
             Natasha introduced us to deciduous and coniferous trees. 
          A coniferous tree has cones and we found lots on the ground.
                   
   
           We used our mole hands when we found some fungus on a log. 
           We dug into the log where it was rotting and changing into dirt.
     
   We used our butterfly touch to explore orange jelly fungus.  It felt squishy. 
               
   Using our deer ears we heard a frog.  One child spotted this frog under a leaf.

  
                     The children’s eagle eyes spotted some little bones. 
           What animal were they from?  What happened to the animal? 
                                 Lots of questions to explore.
 
    We found a banana slug.  He traveled with us for the rest of the walk.
 
It was a little wet that morning but Natasha was prepared.  She had covered our outdoor classroom with a tarp.  We played a guessing game.  The children put their hand in a container that they couldn’t see into then they had to try to guess what they touched.
          
The containers had cones in them.  Natasha showed us how each were different
and what tree they came from.  Each of these trees grow in our forest.
    
  
                      
                         We were able to find others to match.
            
We finally said goodbye to the banana slug and headed back to the school.  Thanks to Natasha for another wonderful Nature & Science lesson.