Spring, Spring Coming Soon! Grass is Green and Flowers Bloom!

Happy spring from the Forest Dreamers! This week we have been nature detectives scouring Irvine’s property in search of signs of spring! Among the bits of unmelted snow and naked branches, sure enough, spring is sprung! It will be amazing to see Irvine continue to get greener as the weeks progress. We thought we’d be first on the scene to see the action in it’s primary stages.

On Tuesday, we were met with a bit of chilly air. No worries though, we were determined! We started talking plans of a Forest Dreamer garden, which led to an amusing discussion about things that don’t live in a garden! The responses were quite funny! Did you know that chicken does not grow in a garden? Neither does pizza, bacon, rain boots, fish, socks, rocks or jackets according to our class!

We decided to take our longest hike yet to Bauer Preserve to search for the illusive frog eggs that have been spotted by some Irvine staff. In order to get to the pond, we had to walk across a giant ‘sunflower graveyard’. My, how this will look different in a few months! Passing over the crumbling dirt and broken stalks reminded us that the edge of winter was still with us. Just when we thought we’d surely not find a sign of spring, a chorus of peepers started loudly sounding! Frogs are an unmistakable first sign of spring! As we approached the pond, they got louder and louder! Although we didn’t see any frogs or eggs, we really enjoyed listening to them and mucking about in the pond!

Our story on Tuesday was called The Mysterious Tadpole by Steven Kellog. Alphonse, a gift to a young boy, was no ordinary tadpole. He lived on a diet of cheeseburgers and his home was a giant swimming pool that would barely hold him! The Forest Dreamers really liked this one!

Thursday brought some more signs of spring! We met by the fire, each throwing a stick in and announcing a message of spring happiness to one another. We then found a comfortable sit spot in the amphitheater and used our journals as inspiration as we took in the changing sights around us. Sit spots are areas to relax and reflect alone and uninterrupted. We will be using our sit spots a lot this semester.

We took a look inside the Woodland Garden. Sure enough, we found little green ‘pops’ all around the garden. The crumbly, decomposing leaves will fertilize them quite nicely. The FD were very interested in knowing what each little placard said as we walked by it. We learned that some plants, flowers and trees had funky names!

Ms. Sophie showed us a spot where we found a beautiful, but ultra stinky sign of spring- skunk cabbage! We played among the aromatic skunk cabbage and climbed on fallen logs. It was a great new place that our class has never explored before!

Our day ended with a sunny sit in the meadow together. Ms. Sophie read us a poem about March which sparked our budding poets to write their own poem about spring! Each FD wrote at least one line. See if you can guess which one your child wrote:

Forest Dreamers Spring Has Sprung

March 23, 2017

Spring is full of flowers

One of the flowers got stepped on

The spring flowers bring rain showers

And then one day one of the flowers breaks and makes new seeds that blow away

I like bees and they like me

I love the flowers that pop in my garden

I like my mom’s sticks that grow in her garden

The apples grow in the spring

The flowers are full of colors

The seeds land on the ground and one day more grow from those seeds