Bobcats 2018: Week 2 - Discovery Scope!

We had a lovely day in the woods! It was cool, but drowsy warm in the sunshine, the perfect day for exploring the woods.

We started out our day sharing our opening circle with the Tadpoles. We sang a song together with them and shared something we were grateful for. After opening circle the Bobcats left on a mission while the Tadpoles had snack.

Our mission was to find a fun spot for the Tadpoles to set up camp and leave signs along the trail to lead them to it. After we found a fun spot, we set out on a wander to explore the land. Along the way we found a huge scattering of several different kinds of nuts. We collected as many as we could and brought them back to the spot along the pond we found for the preschoolers to leave for them as a gift. Along the way we found some beautiful growing plants, and decided one of the projects we wanted to work on this semester was making a First Aid kit from plants growing on the land.

While we had snack waiting for the preschoolers, we had such a great time looking at various items through the Discovery Scope! This fun, portable magnifying glass is almost like a small microscope and comes with attachments for looking at small objects, liquids and live insect-sized things. We couldn't get enough of it. We checked out Usnea, dirt, leaves, and pond water. Ashlyn even caught an ant and carefully put her in the specimen box, but she was too fast to get a good look at for very long.

After snack we played a game of Otter Steals Fish. This game encourages participants to rely on their sense of hearing when they play the Heron, and their eyesight and ability to be silent when playing the otter.

We then went on a wander to check out the tracks and the trail where we found the scat last week to see if there was any new animal sign. We found some new tracks in the swamp and think we know what animal left it, what is your guess??

During lunch we talked about what projects and skills we want to work on over the semester and came up with this exciting and ambitious list: Tracking, Plant Identification, Medicinal and Edible Plants, Making a Land-Based First Aid Kit, Shelter Building, Making Wooden Spoons and other wooden cutlery.

We finished up the day with a wander through the "Scat" Field and we were not disappointed! With the tracking book, we looked up a few of the details we had about the scat and came up with some ideas of who ate who and then pooped in the middle of the trail.