Geese Ducks and Osprey-Oh My!

Today we met at Cottage Lake and began with duck puppets for all.  Everyone quacked along to the songs,  6 little ducks went out one day and 5 little ducks-both favorite songs of Tiny Treks!
Then we were ready to climb aboard the paddleboat!  Wow!  3 moms and 3 kids-thats a lot on a boat!

We saw a mother Canadian Goose in her nest sitting on her eggs.  She watched us suspiciously while we floated by.  There was an osprey diving for fish and a fisherman throwing small fish back!

We ended our day making our own smoothies.

Here is the recipe:

1 banana

1 handful frozen blueberries

1 handful frozen mangos (from Trader Joes)

1 cup yougurt

1 tsp Vanilla

1 cup Milk

Yum!

We have Bug Boxes but where are the bugs?

For class this week the weather continued to be cold, stormy and rainy. Our theme today was bugs and bug boxes. We began class talking about how good bugs can help farmers.  Then we got to open and decorate with stickers our very own bug boxes.  After a greeting by Maddie the Monkey and some quick stretches we headed out into the weather.  Armed with digging tools, rain boots, rain coats and our bug boxes we were in search of bugs.  We turned over logs, looked under dead leaves and dug into tree stumps.  Well, this teacher was stumped!  The bugs weren't out yet!  They were no where to be found.  We even were followed by an enterprising chicken who was scratching for bugs too!  I don't think she found any either.

So our lesson for this week turned out to be-there aren't bugs yet when the weather is still cold!  But we did examine mold on tree bark, moss, lichen and used our nets to scoop up rocks from the bottom of a stream.

We also spent some time in the barn.  It was fun to see Pinkie's 2 week old piglets too. They are growing so fast!  There were 10 last week and now there are only 9.  Where did the 10th go?

We ended our chilly bug hunt  in our cozy little "house", reading a funny book about cows that type,
 Click Clack Moo, and by eating "Ants on a log"-peanut butter spread on celery with dried cranberries.  These were the only bugs we saw today!

Bee Stormy-see if we care!

It was a stormy, windy and rainy day with Tiny Treks today.  We made thumbprint bees, butterflies and caterpillars and then put them in a flower garden on our paper with foam flowers and stamps.  We talked about how bees and wasps help pollinate our flowers and fruit trees.  We sang silly songs about "picking up baby bumblebees" and all agreed it wasn't a good idea!  On our hike we splashed through the swollen streams, lost boots and got wet feet.  But it was all in good fun!  Oh yes-and Pinkie the sow had 10 piglets!  They were soo cute.  We got to watch them nurse and hear them squeal.
We had a special honeycomb snack while we read Bee Wigged-a story about how to make friends and be yourself at the same time. 
We were all so glad that Tiny Treks got out into the storm!