One of the most exciting parts of starting a nature kindergarten program is seeing how it can evolve over time. A few years ago, after having a well-established trail and outdoor learning space at my school, I connected with a teacher from the district's high school at our trail as she was interested in doing something similar at some woods near the school. Just a few years later, our nature kindergarteners were able to meet with our Friends from the Retzer Nature Center to explore and enjoy that space.
The objective of our explorations was to investigate how plants and animals prepare for winter in a forest ecosystem. All five kindergarteners broke into groups and went through five different stations throughout the forest.
Our first stop was to search for fungus and learn about how plants and animals decompose to help new plants grow.
On our way to the second station, we saw some of the mulch piles that will eventually be used to spread over the trial, Until then, they might become "mice mansions" for some furry friends looking to avoid winter's chill.
At our second station, we looked at some animal artifacts and discussed some adaptations animals have for winter survival.
Our third station was a walk along the trail to find different potential habitats for animals. We found tree cavities, squirrel nests, rotted out stumps, and holes along the trail and at the base of trees.
On our way to station four, we stopped to play a bit. We discovered a hollowed out "tree boat" deep in the stages of decomposition and even gave some of the bigger oak trees we could find a nice hug,
At station four, we used a leaf book to find and identify different leaves. We compared different types of leaves as we tried to find as many different types of leaves as possible.
After leaving station four and heading on a hike to the other side of the forest, we found many things like. . . .
a resting spot,
a bug's dinner,
a baby tree,
a teenager tree,
and an adult tree.
Then, at our final station, we investigated things animals might collect as they prepare for winter.
 |
| A leaf-kabob |
Then, we made our own leaf collections. We worked to make a leaf rainbow and found lots of fun leaves.
Though we ran out of time, we did see the end of the game other classes played. Basically, using pictures of animals , the class sorted them and placed them on a warm winter coat if they stayed in winter or on a backpack if the traveled to a warmer winter destination.
In our regular outdoor classroom, we continued outdoor stations with some great outdoor library time, snowshoe practice, sight word stones, and pine cone art.
In our natural play time, we even continued our decomposition party and found lots of mushrooms and fungi.
We upped our sit spot to six minutes of observation and six minutes of notes/illustration.
And, with this week's weather lesson focusing on cloud cover, we learned about the word overcast. Mother Nature was more than happy to put that new word into practice.
Lastly, we collected some pumpkins leftover from the holiday and did what every kid wants to do, smash 'em.
We wanted to make food collecting for our animal friends that mush easier, so smashing the pumpkins made access to the seeds super simple. We will see if any seeds last over the long weekend, but the class was pretty sure they would be gone. We will find out next week. We will also start new stations, dig deeper into HAM (Hibernate, Activate, Migrate), and of course, play in the great outdoor
No comments:
Post a Comment