Forest Studies

Hello everyone,

Welcome back from break, I hope that everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving. We ended up with a really exciting week at Fiddleheads to get us back in the routine. We moved on from our tree unit to studying the forest as a whole. We read the wonderful book "Fungus is Among Us', and went on a mushroom hunt. We also talked about how fungus is a 3rd life form, not plant and not animal, and how it is everywhere, living around and among and upon us. We pretended to be spores flying from a mushroom cap, and we made spore prints with the mushrooms that we found. We had an incredibly serendipitous day on Tuesday, when we found a pigeon kill site, probably captured and eaten by a raptor, and the kids and Ginger did much hunting for feathers and remains. We got to examine many different types of feathers from the bird's body and we talked about how the remains that we find and when where and how we find them can help us know the fateful story of what happened to that pigeon. We were really lucky to have Ginger's skills and insight to help us do this. We talked about predator prey relationships and the emotional paradox we find in examining those relationships; we feel sad for the pigeon but also happy for the hawk at the same time. Then we played a hawk pigeon predator prey chasing game that was great fun. We read the lovely book "Where Would I Be in and Evergreen Tree", which outlines the diversity of wildlife in one conifer tree habitat in a pnw forest, and talked about the diversity of wildlife that is present around us in the forest all the time, just hidden from our view. We then played camouflage, which is a game something like a forest school version of hide and seek. On Friday we made trail mix for snack! It's been lovely, dry, cool weather and we got to cover some ground in the park this week and enjoy the days. It was a good week.

We also added to the general excitement in the play yard by getting a puppy! My family just adopted Rocco, an 8 week old lab/shepherd mix. He's right on the level energy and enthusiasm wise with preschool play. He'll be coming out to play at brief intervals at outdoor time to socialize and try and learn some manners. It's pretty fun to have a puppy in the yard and it's a great gift to him to be able to interact with the kids and feel their joy and grow his own. Pretty much everyone is thrilled except Harper ;)

originally written on December 6th