Happy New Year and Welcome to our new families and welcome back to our returning families. It was so wonderful to see these smiling faces again and for there to be snow on the ground. Exploring Audubon in the winter is such a special time. We also welcomed a new AmeriCorps member, Kyra! 

Our morning activity started us out by looking around us and noticing 10 signs of winter. Some of our observations included the fact that there is snow on the ground, being able to see out breath, trees not having leaves, things being dead and brown, the ground being frozen, and so many more. 

Our first activity during the day was to explore Beaver Pond. We talked about safety and how it’s important to always check ice before you walk on it and how the teachers will test the ice before students step on it too. The ice was about 4 inches thick! Many of us spent the time making a fishing hole in the ice (we ended up making 2) and trying to ice fish. We also saw some tracks and looked at them to try and see what kind of animal we had. We also investigated some cracks in the ice, we noticed they had re-froze but that there were cracks all along the pond. 

In the afternoon we worked together to continue building a shelter from the past fall. Instead of breaking up into small groups the students wanted to be one large group, but sign up for jobs to spread out the tasks. If someone needed to talk to the group we would have a town hall meeting that was signaled by chicken clucking. There was some great communication happening here!