Our first day of Forest Classroom Fall 2023! I could not wait to meet with the new group of students and see what the next 3 seasons have in store for me. Today taught me 1 thing for sure, these students didn’t care that it was chilly and raining, they wanted to explore and be outside! Just from this, I can tell we will have an awesome year.

As everyone was arriving, we started with decorating our name tags and journals. The journals will be used all year long to help us track our cool findings. After that we all gathered to look at OUISI cards, these are small cards with some zoomed in pictures on them. They are all nature-based pictures, they are great to build connections, find similarities, and learn something new. They are great to use at home on a rainy day or bring them outside to see if you can find connections between nature and the pictures.

The rain stopped so we moved outside to talk about our Audubon rules and expectations as well as do introductions. During snack we held Morning Meeting. All together we agree on a day and discuss what we hope to accomplish.

Our first activity was exploring and catching critters at Beaver Pond. We caught a lot of tadpoles, some dragonfly nymphs, leeches, and more macroinvertebrates. Some of us brough our journals and we drew our surroundings.

At lunch we picked what chapter book we would start reading and the group picked Belly Up. After we fueled up, we played a round of Park Ranger.

Our next adventure took us on a hike to the lower Audubon property. Emily brought us to different places, the brook, peeper pond, the river, etc. and we discussed what activities we could do at these locations. As we hiked, we played a fun trail game too!

Before we knew it, it was time for afternoon snack and Thank you Circle where we shared our favorite part of the day.