farmers' market thursday meets nature sketches

endangered/protected species posters

homeschool 4H club field trip on Tybee Island: beach ecology

playing sharks and minnows  to  learn about how sea oats  area vital part  of beach ecology and sand dunes

searching for shark teeth

A Day in The Salt Marsh

We Combed The Beach Today...

 

We homeschool...

we could have just read about sea stars and sand dollars in a book...

  

or we could actually hit the beach and save these beautiful creatures from the dangers of low tide!

I wonder what would make more of an impact on my girls?

"Class" Field Trip

We had a nice field trip today to the educational center at the zoo. The day started as yet another drizzly, damp, and gray day. But literally upon our arrival the skies cleared and the sunshine came out! (I feel that Mother Nature was doing me a favor, because after our class it was raining and cold again!) We got there about an hour early to walk around a bit. Then we headed back to the educational center for our class with an elementary teacher turn zoo educator:) We first learned to distinguish the difference between living and non living things: living things grow, living things need water, and living things need energy--I had to refrain about asking about lamps and light bulbs and televisions:)
We learned about the difference between plants and animals, and we learned about vertibrates and invertibrates (do I dare mention a few names of people who lack backbones:)--Ms. Molly had real live examples of the latter---we met Hedgie the hedge hog and a tarantula! Finally the class ended with a nice art project. I should mention that Ms. Molly explained photosynthesis to the children; and when she mentioned that plants convert the energy from sun into sugar---my little angel rather loudly said 'OOOOOOHHHHH!" (that's my girl!)

p.s. The photo shown above with Fairy girl sitting on the statue's lap--she walked right over there, plopped herself down and said, "HI DADDY!:)"

Woodland Holiday Class

We had our Woodland Holiday class this morning at our local nature center
http://www.county.milwaukee.gov/display/router.asp?docid=10115
We started out sitting on the pond (carpet) where each child selected a stuffed friend to hold. My older angel selected a beaver, and my little fairy selected a squirrel. Miss Bev. Then read a beautiful story (that we have at home too) called The Snow Tree (I have these winter tales books in a series, and they are beautifully illustrated with raised embossed pages). As each animal was read in the book, the child holding that animal got to go to the tree and decorate with the appropriate ornament. My angel with the beaver decorated with a piece of fur, and my fairy girl with the squirrel hung red berries on the tree. After story time the children get to do a craft, and today they put little ornaments on the pine cones. I'm going to put some pretty yarn on so we can hang it on our own tree. And finally it was snack time, so the kids were each handed a cut out Christmas tree cookie, and got to spread different colors of frosting on (and then of course eat it). As the high today is ZERO, we didn't take the class outside for a walk in the woods (and somehow, I FORGOT to put mittens on my little angel--bad mom! She usually tells me things like that:) On a really good note, as cold as it is today, it's a heck of a lot warmer than it was yesterday, as we had 40mph winds that made it unbearablely cold--about 25 below zero windchill--and on an even brighter note, contrary to popular belief, there are actually colder inhabited places on earth--check out today's headlines, brrrrr!

A visit to the coldest town on Earth

Founded by Mongols in the time of Ghengis Kahn, the town of Oymyakon is the coldest permanently inhabited place on earth.

The village has a population of around 800 and is located 690 meters above sea level and lies in a valley between two mountain ranges (the reason for the low temperatures). The name Oymyakon means "non-freezing water" because of the natural hot spring close to the village.

The temperature this week is pretty low and the temperature tomorrow is a chilly -63C which based on the stats at Wikipedia equals the record low for December.

HOOT HOOT---Owl Class at the Nature Center

We had owl class at our nature center today--the little owl in the first and third pictures is named Tuft. She's an eastern screech owl and a resident of the nature center. She was blinded in one eye when she was hit by a car (unfortunately a very common occurrence with owls, also the fate of the large taxidermy owl in the second picture). The driver of that car brought her right to a vet who was able to save her life; but she could not survive in the wild now. She also has glaucoma forming in her other eye. She's fed one mouse a day, and by morning, it's pretty much gone. The naturalist took Tuft outside on a leash with our class. Tuft is a sweetheart!

http://www.county.milwaukee.gov/router.asp?docid=10115