The Green Mountain Audubon Center looked magical in the dusting of snow that Monday and Tuesday brought this week. We brought some shovels down to the clubhouse for students could build or dig upon arrival. Our first few students used the shovels to do a good deed for the whole group! They cleared the snow off of our picnic benches where we eat snack and lunch.
Then, a whole crew decided they would shovel the stairs leading to the Sugarbush Trails to make it safer for visitors. Plus, it's fun to pretend your a powerful snow plow and chuck snow into the woods.
Once more friends arrived the real snowy fun began! The snow was perfect for packing and building things so a group worked on making a snowman together. We even had one student who was a snow sculptor making replicas of wood ducks and other water fowl. Later, all snow creations were destryoed by their creators.
After enjoying our free play in the snow, we gathered at the benches to have snack and continue the last few chapters of Who Killed Cock Robin? This week some very exciting plot points were revealed...maybe NASA is responsible for Cock Robin's death because Mary Alice's father was making a new special kind of space suit for them at the Missatonic Mill! We'll find out two weeks from now during our LAST Forest Classroom (can you believe it?!). Can't wait to see how this story ends.
Emily and I thought we would take advantage of the snow and do some early wildlife tracking in the Sugarbush woods and at Beaver Pond. Students learned that the most important details when identifying a track are: Place (Where did you find the track? Whose habitat are you in?), Pattern (What kind of walking pattern did the animal leave?) and, of course, Print! Each student was given a tracking guide that had photos of common animal prints, the four most common walking patterns and a ruler to measure to the size of the track. We took our guides and headed into the woods! We mostly found squirrel tracks, but we also spotted a few deer tracks and maybe even a beaver track.
When we stopped at Beaver Pond we thought we might have found tracks, but it looks like they may have just been tiny boot prints! However, we definitely found more sticks that were recently gnawed on by a beaver right along the shore of the pond. We might have to put a game camera out there to see if we can get eyes on our beaver friend!
After tracking the students built snow forts and had a snowball fight. The snowball fight was completely orchestrated by them - rules and all. I overheard one student telling others the list of rules that included "No snowballs above the shoulders" and "No throwing snowballs at someone who doesn't want to play." Loved hearing this!
At lunch, we continued reading our chapter book and voted on whether we'd like to end our day in the field or the woods. All votes were for the field, so we spent some time playing camouflage in the sunshine until our adults arrived.
We DO NOT have Forest Classroom on Veteran's Day, 11/11. We will see you 11/18.
