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.

Spin a Turkey Tail

            
I pulled out the lazy susan turntables this morning with the thought of squeezing paint onto paper circles to make turkey tail feathers.  But I got busy with other things and just put out markers, pencils and crayons.  They worked better than I thought.
      
In the past we have done this activity using paint and the children had difficulty adding the paint and spinning the turntables by themselves.
 
       With the markers, pencils and crayons they could manage it.
  
     Occasionally parents did help or worked together to create their art.

Here are a few of our turkeys.
   
     
                      Gobble, gobble!  Have a happy Thanksgiving.

Match the Leaves

                  
This is a sticky matching activity.  The leaves are drawn on a piece of paper and then covered with sticky contact paper, with the sticky side out.
              
 
The children search through the basket, pick a leaf and match it to the shapes.  I realized I have way too many leaves in the basket which made it difficult to find the different shapes.  Next time I’ll put a few of each shape.
                         
This activity helped us look closely at the leaves and talk about how many points and parts each have.
            
I need to look for better contact paper as this one didn’t hold the leaves very long.
        
   The leaves were moved over to our trees and were perfect for raking.

StoryWalk–It’s Pumpkin Time

           
  I set up the book “It’s Pumpkin Time” by Zoe Hall in the pumpkin patch.
                      
                 It’s a perfect story to tell the life cycle of a pumpkin.
      
It also was a way to encourage the families to take time and walk around the patch.
    
Shannon, the farmer, pointed out that the pumpkins this year are reseeding themselves.  As we walked through the story we saw evidence of that happening.
                
                      New blossoms were growing on vines.
                 
           And we saw small green pumpkins attached to vines.
         
I overheard parents making comparisons to the book and their child’s pumpkin choice.
               
                       
   In the end they all found their perfect pumpkin for Hallowe’en.

You can watch a video of the book here.