Bird Watching and Rolling Through the Forest

bird watching

This week, we spent many peaceful moments observing the birds visiting our feeder. We wanted to get as close as possible to the birds, so we brought out our camouflaged camp chairs to set up a cozy spot for us to sit. We used our bird ID books to look up which birds we were seeing- using the colors of the birds feathers and their beak type to help us. Some of the birds that we identified were Black-Capped Chickadees, Robins, Blue Jays and Red-bellied Woodpeckers.

We continued creating our own feeders to hang up all over the trees. We loved seeing which birds would land on our pinecones to eat some seeds. We brought our bird sounds book with us to the bird feeder. When we noticed a bird or heard a sound, we would search to find if it was featured in our book. Once we found it, we would replay the bird call sound to hear if the bird would respond back to us.

We have been trying to get a bird to land in our hands to eat some seeds. We talked about how our bodies need to be very still and our voices very quiet, and practiced for many moments this week. No bird has landed in our hands yet, but we had some birds land in the branches right in front of our face. It was so special to be so close to the birds, and we feel inspired to keep trying next week!

Riding Through the forest

With the warmer weather this week and the snow slowly melting, we were looking for a new way to go fast down the hills- so out came our bikes and skateboards! After using our big hill in the forest for some speedy sledding, we decided to try it out with a new mode of transportation.

We started zooming down pathways that were the most clear of natural obstacles. With the steepness of the hill, we used our bodies in different ways to control our speeds. We used our heels as brakes on the skateboard, and put more pressure on our feet on the balance bikes to slow down.

The leaves, sticks and pine needles of the forest lead to a bumpy and slippery ride down the paths. We wondered how we could make it feel a little more smooth while still going fast, and decided to bring out some planks of wood.

Another beautiful week in the books here at Wildwood!

Animal Tracking and Dinos!

Animal Tracks in the Snow!

This week the kids dove into a dinosaur world as they created and played in forts and shelters for their dinosaurs and other figurines. This interest has bloomed out of our excitement for tracking animals around our Grove and garden by intently following their distinct tracks. We began to wonder... what does a dino track look like?!

So, of course, we had to find out.

Out come the dinos! We pressed their feet into regular and colorful snow and observed their footprints. Then we read about each type of dinosaur figurine that we have, and tried to grasp how big they each used to be in real life. We giggled when we found out a Carnotaurus is as tall as two Miss Olivias! Children loved hearing how fast each of the different dinos could run, as Miss Emily and Miss Olivia compared their dino speed to that of cars on different types of roads. We giggled when we found out the Brontosaurus' run would be a safe speed for the road that goes by Wildwood, but once cars turn into the parking lot, they should really be going Stegosaurus speed or slower. When cars passed our school going too fast, children loved to shout "Brontosaurus speed, please!!!"

The animal track exploration continues…

We were wondering what animals were leaving each track, so we brought out all of our animal track booklets to help us identify. We also used our knowledge about what animals in our area may be hibernating right now, so we likely wouldn't see their footprints. Every day this week, we went for small hikes throughout the fields and forests to follow tracks. Some of the animals that walk through Wildwood are squirrels, turkeys, deer, coyotes, mice and even baby bobcats!

Some of the tracks had front legs and back legs that looked different, like this rabbit that we identified.

We used our hands and our feet to see how big the foot prints were. We noticed that some tracks were leading to the trees and then disappearing, and we wondered if that meant they were climbing into the tree!

More Fun In The Snow