Monday/Wednesday Forest Dreamers:
There are deer in the woods!
Following the trail from the Glen this Monday led us to some scat! The kids were excited to investigate and see what was this animal was eating. We quickly found some persimmon seeds. Ms. Kelly asked the kids if they wanted to go find the persimmon tree and see if we could find any more signs of our elusive animal. Circling the desired trees, we determined that we needed to find a better path to reach the fruit. As we were cutting through the mud, we noticed several deer tracks! MMMmmmm, we wondered what the deer wanted in this area!?! We blazed a trail through the high grass towards the persimmon tree. While we were strolling, we pretended we were deer searching for a snack. One of our friends quickly decided to be a fawn. Another a buck! Our last friend took a different approach and chose to be a horse 🙂 Looking around, we realized the grasses where we were standing was flattened. The kids decided that this was a good place to bed down (as deer and a horse) because there was food and water close by! After we found the persimmons, we gathered a few that looked orange and were soft. We wanted to cut them open to compare the seeds we found in the scat earlier. What a great time exploring and imaging life as a wild animal!
Leaf Art:
Wednesday we started at the Woodland Garden looking up through the canopy towards the blue skies. Excitedly, one friend exclaimed she saw a dog bone in the leaves! When we all followed her gaze, we all saw her discovery! Looking at the branches, we started talking about the different leaves and their shapes on the forest floor. This started us collecting interesting and colorful leaves and twigs. We soon had our envelopes bursting with our treasures. As we ran down the meadow trail, we stopped to check out the grasshoppers and black walnuts! At the pond, one friend jumped right in and we encouraged him to pull up the cattails plants so that we could dissect them. We soon cut the cattails into different sections, squeezing water from the stems. Sadly, we had to head back towards the nature center but we were excited to create some artwork with our leaves. We challenged our forest dreamers to create an animal or another work of art using the items they had collected. I think we can all agree that they made some pretty amazing pictures!
