Buddy the Girl Turtle excited about her shrimp snack!

The Diamondback terrapin (Malaclemys terrapin) or simply terrapin, is a species of turtle native to the brackish coastal swamps of the eastern and southern United States, from as far north as Cape Cod, Massachusetts and as far south as Cape Sable, Florida.

Our New Nature Center

This is our new nature center, which is part of Hunting Island State Park. We will be taking many many classes here. The classes will be very different from those offered at Weir Nature Center. Now we will take such things as alligators, sea kayaking, pier fishing, crabbing, or gyotaku (stumped most of you here, didn't I:) Gyotaku is fish printing, in case you were wondering. Oh, and their resident female turtle, is named Buddy; obviously very near and dear to my heart!!!!

Snow Balls and Mittens Class

We first read these very sweet stories---SNOWBALLS was actually written by someone local.


Doing the song of the snow flakes---"Snow flakes up, snow flakes down, snow flakes snow flakes all around." We'll let you know if the snow has heard its call and makes its appearance. (I have a strong hunch it'll be here tomorrow, again:)


Snow Art--the kids took a small balloon and dipped it into some white paste, and decorated with cue tips and paint. This is my little girl's snow women.


My Little Fairy Girl is outside painting the snow, with non toxic paint in spray bottles.


A few of the kids from the class climbing the "mountain" and making snow angels. After the class went back inside, they made snowman snacks by piercing marshmallows through rod pretzels and using raisins and candy corn to make the eyes and nose. The other really cute idea, and I'd like to do this at home is they had felt snowmen hanging on the walls, and felt accessories (hats, mittens, eyes, noses, mouth, etc) so you could decorate your snowman as you please.

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

Little Pumpkin Class at the Nature Center

This is a little baby pumpkin, still on the vine.



My little fairy girl picking her pumpkin.



Giving their pumpkins some personality!


We'd like to introduce you to Geena Pumpkin (left) and Daddy Pumpkin (right) (named by the girls:).

Butterfly Class

We had butterfly class today at our local nature center located just a couple of miles from our house. Unfortunately it was raining so we could not do our usual walk in the woods and to the pond to look for occurrences in nature. But the girls had a lot of fun. Something very interesting happened as we were leaving class, the girls stopped to see a couple of turtles (whom they touched and played with at our last turtle class)--and Boxy the Box turtle (in her glass case) walked right up to the front of the case and was interacting with the girls--cocking her head back and forth--and just looking at them as they were at her--and Boxy yawned too:)

Anyway, back to butterflies:

We enjoyed playing and acting out Eric Cole's THE VERY HUNGRY CATERPILLAR (for some reason, I don't have that book, I'll have to add it to my wish list:)

The Butterfly's Life cycle:

1. An Adult Butterfly lays an egg.
2. The egg hatches into a caterpillar or larva.
3. The caterpillar forms the chrysalis or pupa.
4. The chrysalis matures into a butterfly.