Winter...the most wonderful time of the year!

As the snow makes it difficult for some of us to get to school, and the cold weather is sometimes too cold for us to go outside and play, it's good to be reminded about what's so great about winter.  We made a list of all of the fun things we like to do in the winter time, including making snow angels, sledding, snowshoeing, skiing, playing hockey and catching snowflakes on our tongues.  

Why do we have winter?  

Here are a few answers from children who seemed to know.

"The bears need time to hibernate."

"Because we are in Minnesota."

"You would get sick of summer if it was summer all year."

"Sometimes you just want to be cold."

"So the snow rabbits and other snow animals survive."

"Other people don't have winter because they aren't ready."

"So we can make a snowman family."

"It goes in a pattern of changing seasons."

"Because it's fun!"

 

 

Animal House

Our past weeks' discussions on animal tracks have led us on many adventures, sometimes curiously following a set of prints to find...an animal house!

An animal house could be a bird nest, a fox den, or a beaver lodge.  We studied the beaver, an all-star builder, and learned that beavers use mud and chewed-down trees to build their home.

We attempted to build homes using some creative building materials...toothpicks and marshmallows!  Check out the animal houses and hard work below. 

Sole Search

This week we focused on creating our own tracks.  

Some children made animal prints using a track kit from the Minnesota DNR.

Some classes were lucky enough to get outside to create some of our own tracks and footprints in the snow.

The cold weather didn't stop us from making tracks!  

We created hand prints...

 ...and footprints!

Even Teacher Vicky made a hand print or two!

Foot-notes

January is a great month for tracking animals.  Animals leave us footprints in the fresh snow, and as long as it's not too cold, we can check out who's been here.  Here are a few footprints we found this week at school.

 Horse hooves in the pony pasture

 Cat prints heading towards the hay barn

Rabbit prints near the log cabin

 

We also measured the tracks to see how big the animals were that left the tracks behind.