Who's Out And About In The Winter?

 

We had a fantastic day tracking today! There was a lot to learn, so even our outside game was about tracking. We played “Red light green light animal style” where homeschoolers really had to think about how animals move: hopping, bounding, waddling, etc. 

Then we came inside and began our circle with a tracking greeting. Everyone had made crayon rubbings of their shoes on pieces of paper. All the papers were in the middle, and kids picked one and had to find whose “track” it was, then greet them. Kids were experts at this!

 Kids had wonderful home projects to share, from icicles made from Borax, to tissue paper snowflakes, to an article on W.A. “Snowflake” Bentley! I was so impressed. You can see their snowflakes on the windows.

Our password today was “scat” which homeschoolers knew to mean droppings or poop. Thanks to my friend Alia, we had samples to show! (Don’t worry – they were dried out in the sun before storage and don’t smell anymore!)

 

Who's been at the bird feeders today?

To practice our observation skills, we played “Kim’s game” for our morning activity. I laid out a bunch of nature objects and covered them with a bandana. I removed the bandana for five seconds so kids could study the objects, then covered them up again. We counted how many objects we could remember. Then I took objects away and they had to guess which ones! Kids were very keen observers.

 I read a book called “Who’s Been Here” about two children who go walking in the woods and find signs of animals. Homeschoolers were great at guessing who left the signs: gray squirrel, chipmunk, cardinal, porcupine, deer, etc.

 

I was excited to share a few things I learned by tracking with Sue Morse a couple of weeks ago. One was a way to tell the difference between cat and dog tracks. Many people know that cats can retract their claws and so you won’t find a cat track with claws. Dogs don’t have this ability and so their tracks will show the claw marks. But what about if the snow has melted, or the track isn’t complete? There is another way to tell the difference between cat and dog tracks. Even after the snow has melted away, often a dog track will still reveal an X shape of negative space in between the toes and the palm pad. Cats have more of an M-shaped palm pad, whereas a dog has a pointy triangular palm pad. 

Our outdoor adventure was full of tracks and scat! We used a plastic spoon for reference on the photos. There wasn't much snow but the mud was an excellent medium for tracks! 

 We started out by looking at a track in the mud. Owen guessed that it was a person's track, who had slid in the mud. Then I admitted that it was my own track that I had made unintentionally minutes before, when I slipped in the mud!

One exciting thing that happened was that we spotted some tracks near a stream at the beginning, and when we came back at the end there was another set of tracks next to the first ones! Homeschoolers guessed that the first set was squirrel and the second set was cat, and I have to agree.

First set
Second set

 When we got back to the classroom we ate lunch and began on our journals. We discussed this picture of "A Tree Tells A Tale" and then discussed some more track stories. We became detectives and looked for clues to tell us what happened.

 

Our mystery bag had rubber deer scat!   

One of our favorite parts of the day was walking like animals! Everyone got a turn trying to bound like an otter, hop like a squirrel, waddle like a bear, and perfect-walk like a coyote.

Then we made our own tracking booklets using rubber stamps.

 

Last we played animal charades! Homeschoolers acted out animals, walking like them and doing other behaviors (such as playing dead!)

 

 

Here’s today’s home project. Registration is now open for the spring session! Please sign up this week.