A special moment for many people visiting the outdoors is getting to see wildlife! In the park we explore and use as our classroom for the BeeHive, there is a number of different creatures big and small, we might see or find signs of. Almost every kid I have met has an innate interest in some critter and teaching them how to respect animals while still getting to be in their presence is something I really value and think is important for children (and adults) to learn about! This is where Leave No Trace Principle #6 - Respect Wildlife comes into play!
I broke down our day into four parts for learning about respecting wildlife! Three parts were different activities to get them thinking and learning about wildlife as well as creating their own guidelines for respecting them! The last part of our day was spent with a guest speaker! Here is a picture preview of our three main learning activities ---
Who Am I? Students pair up to figure out what creature they are representing! I challenged the older students to use new vocabulary and concepts to ask questions about their animal while the younger students were able to use basic descriptors to get clues about their animal!
TRACKING! Students learn the difference between stride and straddle when tracking different animals! Here a student is using a muddy spot along the lake shore to make notes about a mysterious track he found! His thoughts - perhaps a fox or dog!
Field Guides: Students spent much of the day learning how to use and exploring different types of field guides! At the end of the day they were able to create a field guide page about themselves! Different tools were available to them and field guides were provided as examples.
The best part of our day was our guest teacher Bre from the Payette Children's Forest (http://www.payettechildrensforest.org/) Our BeeHive was pretty lucky that the week we learned about wildlife happened to be Bat Week as well! Here is the website to learn more about bat week for 2021- https://batweek.org/
Bre met us in the forest with different activities, a story board and information about the importance of bats to our ecosystems! Bats do not have the best reputation at the moment...but the part the play as insect eaters (sooooo many mosquitoes) and pollinators is something Bre and I both believe is important to share! Here she is setting up a game to learn more about echolocation!
If you are interested some of these bat lessons or wildlife lessons, email Ms. Ashlee at backyarddeesessions@gmail.com to learn more!
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