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
