Animals in Winter: Part 2

The additional foot of snow we received on Wednesday meant no after school program, but the following day was jam packed with activities to continue our lessons on animals in winter and animal tracks.
One of the struggles with this after-school program has been finding a way to draw kids away from the computers, wii and board games and instead engage in hands-on science education. I set up a trail of different animals tracks from the front door all the way to the room I usually set up my activities in. This DEFINITELY worked as an attention-grabber, even for older kids and the interns that are rarely interested in my stuff were inquisitive and trying to "guess the animal".

Our plaster of paris animal prints were dry today and the kids had the chance to paint them... the idea is just to paint the track, in order to see it better... but most of the kids wanted to go all out on the paint.... (as you'll see below) I made sure I wrote with a sharpie their name, date, and animal print on the back. The plastic take-out containers we poured them in worked really well, the molds easily slid out. Styrofoam containers worked alright too.

Since only a handful of kids made the animal plasters the day before, I also had a matching game set up for other kids to test their animal track identification skills. One table had a series laminated animal tracks, the other table had cards with animals sketches an info about the animal. The goal: find the matches. This was a good ELS activity because the the animal cards had a lot of text on them. Reading the text sometimes helped provide hints on the appropriate match.

After snack, we went snowshoeing! First, we learned a little about the history of snowshoeing. After, we all went outside and tried it out for ourselves. While outside we also saw some animal tracks (likely squirrel) and some bird feathers scattered on the floor. Later the educators realized the feathers were from a bird that was snatched up by a hawk. We could see the hawk was feeding on the top of our building. (we only pointed this out to one or two of the older children... the blood and such made it a little too disturbing for Kindergarten/1st Graders) The kids had fun making their own tracks and getting an opportunity to "float" on the snow instead of sinking in nearly to their hips and thighs. After practicing walking, turning, and looking for animal tracks, we finished up with a race.... lots of wipe outs and snow flying everywhere, but everyone eventually made it to the other side of the courtyard!!