Rain and sun makes play fun! The Nature Detectives have been taking advantage of the spring weather with days full of puddle stomping, bridge building, seed planting and animal tracking!
With the blossoms and leaves emerging on the trees, the Nature Detectives launched into a full investigation of the plant life cycle. The students visited our compost stations, thinking about how the soil created from our decomposers adds nutrients for the seeds!
We held our own seed expirement- planting radish seeds in soil from our playground, the compost, and sand from our sandbox. The Detectives made their own hypothesis to which would sprout first, and were able to observe the plant growth over the next two weeks!
In our outdoor classroom, the classes worked on turning our garden beds, and adding soil from Audubon’s compost stations to prepare them for planting! Every student got the chance to plant lettuce, spinach and grass seeds in our garden beds! With the rainy weather, we have been excited to watch our plants sprout, and look forward to tracking their progress throughout the rest of the year.
Eggs abound at Woodend during the spring! Under logs, students discovered slug eggs, while in the pond we were excited to discover salamander eggs! Hiding by the pond we found another Yellow Spotted Salamander, and the Detectives were eager to investigate the differences between frog, toad, and salamander eggs, and figure out what type of amphibian eggs we had uncovered!
We have heard the birds calling all around us these past weeks, and were excited to notice nests in some of our bird boxes! The students were also able to examine eggs we found outside a nest, and create hypothesizes to how we think they arrived on the ground.
In celebration of Earth Day, the classes have spent almost our school days outdoors this past week! With our much needed rain, the students enjoyed creek stomps, working hard to build our, “muddy headquarters,” in the AM class, while the PM students worked hard on a bridge by the lookout.
The classes were visited again by our Planet Pal friends, this time meeting Squirmy Wormy and Recycle Girl! Squirmy reminded the students of the importance of natures recylcers (decomposers), while Recycle Girl taught the students about reusing bottles, paper and cans. We even visited Audubon’s large recycle bin by the mansion, and guessed what new items could be created by using our helping hands to pick up recycled items.
With recycling on the mind, each student was able to create their very own Planet Pal power cape out of recycled grocery bags! Each child decided on a superpower to help save the earth, which ranged from rainbows that picked up recycling, TreeGirl who helps seeds grow, to Captain Wind who uses his powers to clean up trash! To cap it off, the students transformed into their Planet Pal superhero selves, and sang some of our favorite Planet Pal songs to our friends up at the mansion.
You won’t believe, what we did today, you won’t believe, what we found! To end this last week, the AM detectives discovered a box turtle up by Audubon’s rain garden! We made a small habitat for it in our outdoor classroom, while researching facts about it in our classroom books. The PM classes was equally entranced, even digging up worms and other small bugs for our turtle friend to eat. It is amazing to watch the students self-led discovery around the animals we are so lucky to find here at Woodend.
Books we Read
Superworm by Julia Donaldson
Why should I Recycle Jen Green
Lola Plants a Garden by Anna McQuinn
Compost Stew by Mary Mckenna Siddals
Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert
The Snails Spell by Joanne Ryder
Weekly Top Hits
This Old Earth
This Old Earth, Needs our help,
to stay fresh and clean and green,
with a pick it up, pitch it in, put it in the can,
this Old Earth needs a helping hand!
I’m a Worm
I’m a diggly, squiggly worm!
And I like to squiggle and squirm!
But it might take me a while,
to crawl a half a mile,
through the compost in my pile!
Planet Pal Cheer
We are the Planet Pals,
the mighty, mighty Planet Pals,
Everywhere we go, people want to know,
who we are, so we tell them,
We are the Planet Pals,
the mighty, mighty Planet Pals,
Gooooo Planet Pals!
Spoiler Alert: Next week we will be learning about birds!
There are so many ways to make nature crowns! All you really need is a strip of paper or cardboard fitted to your child’s head and some glue or tape (a hot glue gun is helpful but not required). Take a nature walk and collect natural items that appeal to your child and then glue or tape them onto the strip of paper/cardboard. Voila!
Play an old favorite game with natural items! The player that is the “hider” chooses a natural item. The “seekers” use their senses to really explore the item before the hider hides it. Discuss its details together: is it large, medium or small? Is it heavy or light? Smooth or rough? It’s important to practice keen observation skills as there may be other natural items that look very similar! Consider marking the item with a sharpie or a string if you think that would be helpful.
Young children love using scissors and it’s so important to give them lots of opportunities to sharpen their scissor skill set on items other than paper. What could be easier than offering your children the chance to practice their cutting skills on yard scraps or items found on a nature walk?
Head outside and find a climbing tree to create a tree obstacle course! Find different ways to climb through the tree – Japanese Maples and Bush Honeysuckle work well for young children – and consider adding a rope for more challenges. You can switch up speed, height, and distance for more or less challenge depending on your child’s age, comfort and skill level.
Audubon Nature Preschool 