Now you see us...now you don't!

Camouflage is such a fun concept to talk about with children. The idea that animals play hide-and-seek with us and other animals is a fun one to explore.

Some of us played a game of Camouflaged Critters.  The children pretended to be hungry birds looking for their lunch in the grass.  Scattered, colored pieces of yarn were spread across the grass as worms. 

We learned that it would be much safer 

to be the brown worms. :)

Other friends made beautiful artwork to 

 demonstrate how camouflage works.

Even playing a good old-fashioned game of hide-and-seek can help us understand how camouflage works.

A game of "Thicket" was a great way to play in

 the woods and learn about camouflage.  

First, one person counted to 10...REALLY LOUD!

 Then, we ran to hide in the woods.

 Can you find us in the pictures below?

 Sometimes, even people can be camouflaged!

Pumpkins, Pumpkins Everywhere!

A big "Thank you!" goes out to all of those families who donated their left-over jack-o-lanterns and pumpkins.  Those pumpkins have been added to our gardens as compost to help them grow even bigger and better next year!  

We had lots of fun bringing the pumpkins to the garden.  Check out the pictures below!

 

A Bat-ty Halloween!

During the week of Halloween, we learned about our little, furry, nighttime friends, BATS!

We learned that bats are the only mammals that can fly.  They are also extremely beneficial, eating mosquitoes and other flying insects by the hundreds each night.  A single bat can eat up to 3,000 mosquitoes in one night.

 The friends above were making their bones look like the bones in the skeleton of a bat.

We also learned that bats are not blind, but they do use echolocation to find food in the dark of the night.

Echolocation, also called bio sonar, is the biological sonar used by several kinds of animals. Echo-locating animals emit calls out to the environment and listen to the echoes of those calls that return from various objects near them.

These friends are attempting to use echolocation to find their way and to find food in the dark.  "Squeak!"  "Tree!"  "Squeak!"  "Mosquito!"

A big thank you goes out to the Minnesota DNR for loaning us a bat kit for the week.  Our children got the chance to be Bat Biologists and learn how scientists study bats.  Maybe you have a budding bat biologist at home!  

Check out the fun pictures below!