Spring appears to be here to stay, so let's just my class will be outside. A lot!
This week, our new "bird buddies" enjoyed filling the feeders with seeds and suet as part of their classroom job. In the final quarter of the year, I aim to "start and end each day with natural play."
The kids were excited to play at the new fallen tree. Over the weekend, a windstorm took down a dead tree. Now we have three fallen trees in a pretty close proximity. Being the teacher I am, I already see lesson plan for tree climbing, We've got a beginner tree, an intermediate tree, and an expert tree.
This week, we also met with our friend from the DNR. She led us on a search for signs of spring hike. We definitely found spring!
We found birds.
We searched for bugs and other creepy crawlies.
We discovered wild onion
We looked for buds.
One of our other spring activities is our participation in the Natural Resource Foundation's Great Wisconsin Birdathon. To wrap up our unit on birds, we are practicing birding by observing them on our land raising funds to help birds of the badger state. After today's birding session, we have correctly identifies twenty species.
We also kicked off our first official round of outdoor stations. Breaking into five groups, we spent approximately twenty minutes engaged in a station activity before coming back together to share and break off into natural play. We will rotate stations and add more along the way.
One station was nature journaling and a second was looking through nature books.
Our service station was searching for litter.
Our ABC station was matching rocks with lower case letters with uppercase partners made with sticks.
The fifth and final station was our insects station, We caught a variety of bugs and other creatures.
As I gave the signal and requested the class to reconvene together, I was alerted to head back towards the oak tree classroom. There, I ran into a group of children staring into the tree. On a snag near the top was a downy woodpecker and soaring high above the tree was a sandhill carne. the best part of this was that the kids noticed it on their own by following the sound of the woodpecker and then taking time to observe the bird together.
When we finally did get together, the highlight of our sharing involved a closer look at our captured critters.
I look forward to outdoor stations and plan in incorporating them earlier and more frequently next year.
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