Tuesday Among the Trees, October 18th

The day that...
we found a tick!

Today we had our first real sit spots.  We love sit spots because it is quiet and peaceful and there is no one bugging you.  Sit spots are hard because it is hard to stay still and it is also hard not to talk to people.  Today we talked about how it is important to learn to be still and peaceful.  That is one of the things we practice at sit spots. We practice being still and peaceful in the woods.

At our morning meeting we played a game where we pretended to be chipmunks and trees.  The chipmunk had to go over the tree, under the tree or through the tree.  In this picture, chipmunk is going through the tree.  During playtime today, some of us saw a REAL chipmunk.  It was exciting!

Mr. Potter found a tick in our woods today.  We all got to look at it so we would recognize one if we saw one.  It is so small!  If you find a tick on yourself you should take it off right away.  The sooner you remove a tick the less likely it is that the tick has made you sick.

We practiced using our counting acorns again today.  Snowy owl brought in a whole basket of acorns!  These acorns will live in the big box in our forest classroom all winter.  Just like chipmunks and squirrels make a cache of acorns, so did we!  Now we will have plenty to count all winter.

In Mrs. T's station we sorted leaved by their shape.  We learned how to tell the difference between a sugar maple leaf and a red maple.  Sometimes red maple leaves aren't red, they can be green or yellow.  We learned that the shape of a sugar maple leaf has rounded edges.  In between the parts of the leaf it looks like the letter U.  Sugar has a U in it so that is how we remember that sugar maple leaves have a U on them.

Mr. Potter (chipmunk's dad) helped us hang up our bird feeders today.  He has been coming to help on forest days and we are so happy to have him around.  Our teachers said that if other parents want to come visit they are invited any time.  Maybe next week there will be seed missing from our feeders.  We will wait and see!

We had a great day in the forest today.  It was 56 degrees and cloudy.