Gray Squirrels 2017-18: Week 14- Journaling and Exploring
We had a beautiful day! It was a little chilly and overcast, but that made movement games fun! Having the cloud cover was a good exploration of Community Compass and how to tell directions if there is no sun.
We shared gratitudes at our opening circle and had a conversation about the Community Compass activity we had played a few weeks ago. One of our students had "Heritage Species". He wasn't sure what that meant, so his Tale-Home Challenge was to work on what he thought it might mean. His thoughts were that dinosaurs are our heritage specie because they were here before us. Even though that's not exactly how we use the term, it was wonderful to see a 5-year old hang on to a question with such tenacity!
That led to a lively conversation about dinosaurs and got the children thinking about how we know what we know about animals by the things they leave behind, and also to help recognize what we know as fact, and what we assume or make guesses about.
Then on to journaling!
And tree climbing!
As we were in a new section of the woods, we asked everyone to stand in the direction they thought was north. Most of them intuitively got it, but then began to second guess themselves. Someone volunteered the idea about moss growing on the North side of trees. We checked it out and found that moss can be tricky! Sometimes it does, and sometimes it grows around the whole tree!
While on our wander we played Wildlife is Watching. This was even more challenging since we were exploring a new part of the woods.
It was getting colder so we played a game new to this group called Crows and Hawks. It was such fun to run in the woods! Today was a really fun day with a balance of play, movement and focused work!
