Elijah: “I want to find deer scat with my best friend Hunter.”

Finn: “I hope to see birds in the sky.” Something about also seeing bees is on the bottom, I think. And I think across the picture it says, “that will be outside.”

Kenzie: “This is me with Elliana.” I’m not sure who the third person is!

Grace: “I found a big stick. I found it on the ground.” This was her journal from last week, actually.

Cameron: “I hope to find deer scat.”

Elliana: “Me and Hadlee are going to find a bear and a deer.” After we got back, we talked about why we thought this kind of plan was never successful. Lucas, our 6th grade helper who comes in Monday afternoons, talked to us about his experience deer hunting. He said that sometimes to see a deer you have to sit still for two or three hours!

Eleanor got us inspired about cattails during Share this morning. Then she spotted them on our hike!

They are big and fluffy!

Celia, Jacob, Leah, and I heard and saw a few birds, including white-breasted nuthatches and this brown creeper! A first in the woods with kids for me. Can you find the bird (from the back?) It is the lump underneath the barkless branch in the middle of the photo.

The story of our day. Ice Ice ICE was the theme of our day. It can be fun and you can get hurt on it and it can slow things down a lot when you are trying to hike!

Sliding was in order today– and a lot of it! Mrs. Johnson’s class joined us this week. This is Silas, Lillian, and Nadia.

Sliding in every position! Cameron.

Brynn in her Sit Spot.

Brooklynn helping chip some of the ice in the fire circle area.

Celia and Eleanor decorated the tree in Celia’s Sit Spot.

Colton wanted to dig in rotten logs and find “a lot of bugs.”

Jacob thought the snow would be soft. He wrote “so” for “snow.”

Kenzie also wanted to find bugs in logs or “treasure” as she called them.

Elliana wanted to find a bunny in a cave, with Kenzie.

Leah hoped to see a bunny, fox, bug, and salamander, with Eleanor.

Kenzie did find deer scat!

Sit Spots (Elliana).

Alec in his Sit Spot. He is our first “Forest Kid of the Week.” This will turn into a class book, with a kid featured each week who was very responsible, focused, and caring in the woods.

Celia in her Sit Spot.

Eleanor in her Sit Spot. Her dad, Mr. A, came today as a fire tender!

Alexis, our first grader helper, doing Sit Spots.

Leah found a tree with a big hole that she thought might be an old woodpecker hole. We dug it out but didn’t find any bugs.

This tree, right next to our fire circle, is definitely a woodpecker tree. Look at all those holes! There was a big pile of wood chips below.

Our discoveries today. Stay tuned for some detailed drawing and brave writing soon!

We had a fire.

It was Celia’s birthday circle and her mom and dad brought us cookies.

Alec was “walking down the snow.” (You can clearly see the deep ravine!)

Elijah: “I slided.” His picture looks like he or someone wasn’t happy about that. Maybe because the ice made our walk out so hard?

We Love Drawing on Whiteboards!

Leah: “We are playing chutes and ladders on the playground.” She labeled “twisty slide” and “ladder”

Elliana: “We are going down the slide.”

Eleanor, describing the pretend play: “We played alone in the ice and the ice was in the ocean.”  The people are saying, “Help!” “I can save you!”

Finn labeled a lot: “Crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch” “the snow flakes” “the sun” “the sky” “the clouds” 

Alec drew him and Leah playing on the big snowbanks. His labels are very clear: “tree” and “the snow” 

Cameron: “We put snow at the bottom of the slides.” (This makes the ride faster!)

Elijah: “Leah and Elijah and Hunter played together.”

Hunter: “We slapped the trees.” He added details with the words “stick” and “the leaf on the ground.” He and Silas used sticks to break the smaller dead branches off of trees.

Kenzie needs paper with more lines, because you can see her sentence going up the side! “We were going to the wetland and we found treasure!” The treasure was ice chunks. You can see that she colored it yellow and labeled it with a post-it.

Cameron: “I slid on the slide.” He wrote “sand” to explain all his brown. There was snow in the woods, but also lots of sand.

Finn: “My friend Jacob” “the hill” “grass” “people playing a lot of the game” (continues on the back). Finn still has to finish his color, but what a lot of labels and words!

I bet most adults can read Eleanor’s without translation!

Leah: “I played outside with Eleanor and Kenzie. We played family.”

Elijah: “Ms. Atkins gave me hand and foot warmers.” The writing near the blue person (Ms. Atkins) says “gave them me.”

Hunter led the way in bringing this 20 ft stick up from the ravine for firewood.

Sweet success!!!

Mrs. Johnson’s class was out with us today. While half of the kindergarteners ate lunch, the other half went on an adventure down into the wetland. We found great climbing trees.

And broke through layers of ice.

Brynn, Brooklyn, and Tevis are skilled climbers!

Hunter: “My plan is to find deer and scat.” He wrote “deer,” “scat,” turkey tracks,” and “gulch.”

Finn: “I’m going to look for leaves, roots, and scat.”

Grace: “I’m going to try to find some scat.” She drew and labeled a turkey.

Eleanor’s plan. I didn’t get a chance to read it with her, so I’m not sure if she wants to slide, see, or sit in water. Based on her picture, I am guessing slide!

Zoey: “Me and Elijah are going to look for turkey tracks.”

Elijah: “We are looking for turkey tracks.” He also labeled “the scat.”

Elliana: “Me and Kenzie are going to find deer and turkeys.”

Mrs. Johnson’s class came out with us today. Here are Elijah and Camden in their Sit Spot.

Colton and Elizabeth. We hear a lot when we are very quiet.

Avery and Leah.

Celia and Nadia.

We got super muddy today, sliding and also climbing on the very long log. The big root ball at the end was ALL mud. We wrote “sticky mud” here. 

So we rolled in the snowy field to clean off!

And made snow angels. On our front and our back!

The result? CLEAN!

We make big snowballs. We figured out that it was easier to roll them from the field into the woods than up the hill!

We slide down the hills. You can see the bumps, sticks, mud, and log at the bottom. Not for the faint of heart!

We find tracks. This is a turkey track– you can clearly see the three toes in front and one in back. We also found a lot of turkey scat.

We also found lots of deer tracks. They have two toes.

Sometimes the snowballs got too big to move. Even when you run across the field at them full speed.

A snowman! Who needs a carrot or pieces of coal?

We Love Sliding.

Good old turkey scat.

This was an airplane, with kids listening to Weatherwoman Eleanor and quickly evacuating every time a hurricane blew through.

We also explored farther down the ravine and into the wetland. We found this climbing tree and called the area Puddle Playground because of all the water.

Dakota and Eleanor, our First Grade Leaders. We brought a shovel to clean off the benches.

Eleanor and Elijah were being scientists measuring the depth of the water. They used a stick and looked to see where it was wet, which showed them how deep the water was.

Turkey tracks and scat!

This log was a plane going to Hawaii, with the passengers escaping many repeated hurricanes.

Snow Ball #2! This one got rolled from the field, which we discovered is much easier than starting at the bottom of a ravine and rolling UP.

Snow Ball #1 made into a snowman. Can you see the face?

Lots of sliding was in order.

Ever the finders of tiny creatures, Hadlee and Grace managed to find roly-polies despite the snow and frozen ground. The roly-polies warmed up and moved around in their warm hands. Later, one seemed to stop moving, so we wondered if the warmth was too much all at once for it. Next time we’ll be more careful with little animals like these.