We emphasized snow and winter weather studies this week as we dove into a book in our "Before Five in a Row" curriculum. We read "The Snowy Day" and pursued this wonderful world of knowledge and exploration with snow, sensory play, hibernation, snowflake making, blizzard playing, science creating, foraging fun! I wrote all about this weeklong storybook adventure in another post you can read, here! It was really an awesome week chocked full of playful learning. The best time! So messy but so much learning and joy! Here are some photos of that curriculum study:
We continued our study of hibernation and migration of animals in winter. Ellie likes to pretend now that she and her baby dolls and stuffed animals are hibernating when we go hiking, playing on the playground, or even just playing in the den.
For Forest School Curriculum this week (Exploring Nature With Children), we actually did a pond study where a moon study was originally on the docket; however, a full moon will arise on January 28, 2021; therefore, we are going to do the moon study in two weeks. We swapped lessons on the weeks essentially. We live on an 8 acre lake...technically a pond. In summer we saw so many turtles, frogs, frog eggs, ducks, duck eggs, geese, fish, and a local Great Blue Heron. We discovered small animal colonies and even a water snake...a banded water snake - harmless. But in Winter, life at the pond is more quiet. We still welcome our Great Blue Heron almost daily and observe as it stretches and swiftly snaps its long neck to catch fish from our shore line in the morning. When it takes flight it is so majestic. We have a male mallard and we watch him occasionally but we haven't seen him lately. This summer, he had mated with a female mallard and had some babies which was so precious to watch! Our neighbors on the other side of the pond have a brood of ducks and a duck habitat which Ellie got to be pretty involved in at the beginning of their stay here. Now we watch them when we go paddling and enjoy them as their adult selves. We found actually for the first time in the 2.5 years we have lived here fresh water snails! They were tiny, but we laid on our dock quite still observing the glass like water when we saw them laying on some leaves settled at the bottom. We gathered three of them in our bug catcher for observation gently. We collected many fresh water clam shells, observed the plants, emergent, and submerging. Then, I took Ellie to our peninsula where twice some beavers had struck two of the trees. We are always discussing on hikes why a tree may have fallen down. Was it lightening? Wind? Root and soil erosion? Was it sick and rotting? What do you think happened? Well in this case, I was able to show Ellie the evidence of a gnawed tree stumps and then the narrow center where the trunk gave way to the narrowing gnawing carried out by the beavers. One stump had actually decomposed so well over the last 2 years that I was able to push it over and its roots were rotted and mush. We thought this was really cool and then added it to our bonfire pit. We waded in our wellies in the water watching the little mosquito fish. We discussed that at this time, all our frog and turtle friends were submerged under the mud hibernating. It won't be too much longer, just a few months until we begin to see strands of rope/cord like transparent slimy eggs sacks full of frog eggs! I love these! It's incredible! Be cautious of these when walking in spring...the eggs are little black dots within the transparent rope like sacs. They will often be in very shallow fresh waters like puddles at rivers and ponds. I've even discovered them on dirt roads in puddles after the heavy rain! So just be mindful when puddle jumping with the littles! And when you do find them, do not touch! Very fragile. Observe with a magnifying glass. So we are excited to watch for this occurrence fairly soon In the next couple of months. Winter is cold and quiet, dormant, and gray, but God created Winter with great purpose and while it is my least favorite month, I still find the glory of God and His goodness in this quiet dark time. He has great purpose for Winter and it makes Spring so much more exciting and beautiful as we watch for those first buds to appear. After our pond study, Ellie played in the grass and mud, followed by drawing in her nature journal. She drew a turtle hibernating under the mud. She gave it a shell, a head, eyes, nostrils, a mouth, and a tail. She gave it 4 legs, but then added another. So it had 5 legs and I joked showing my age it was a teenage mutant ninja turtle. She said, "Huh?!" But then she made up an entire story about her turtle. She decided to draw a beaver on top of the turtle as well. While she drew, I read to her from some of our pond study books. She kept getting up to come look, quite intrigued! I love her love of books!
We went hiking and nature walking. We discussed owls and how they are predators of rodents and such. They are nocturnal. We actually have one living nearby that I was so lucky enough to wildly catch one evening as I went out running. It flew back and forth a few times, screeching and hooting, flying pretty low. It was beautiful. We have been talking a lot about omnivores, herbivores, and carnivores also. She also is always asking questions when we find something in nature, wanting answers and we research the question and learn together about wildlife and plant life. She collected a lot of treasures in her bucket. she found a log down swallowed in turkey tail fungus. She wanted to pick it and she would hold up her hands and fingers telling and showing me how many she wanted. I'd then start plucking the fungus and placing it in her bucket while she counted it out. Then she would want to add to it so we added it up first, then began counting again as I plucked. I'm so happy she is finally finding so much interest in numbers and counting. She then found American Sycamore seed balls on the ground and wanted to count those as we collected them. Some were split in half and we could observe one whole and one half.
One morning we made gluten free banana nut bread! We had fresh shelled and chopped pecans from my grandmother's tree. (We have our own pecan trees but they are young and new purchased at 6 ft tall this fall, so, it may be a while until ours produce.) We made this bread and SON it was so dang good! We ate it for breakfast the next few mornings. Ellie loved using the blender and mortar and pestle to grind the chopped nuts. I don't love too crunchy a texture so grinding them down a bit was perfect!! Ellie told me, "You know...I really love cooking things." That was cool to hear and just filled my mama cup.
We of course, as usual read many many books this week. We repeated a lot of our snow reads for the snow study, we read our pond books, and some other fun stories!
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