Black Hills Nature School

Another wonderful week is in the books at Nature School!! On Monday we explored a new “secret” spot and did some fall art. Today we found a wolf spider carrying her babies on her back. It was so cool! The kids were so excited and possibly a little weirded out about it. Haha!

Last week was another wonderful week to be outside with all of these amazing kids! We made our own nature insects on Monday and then did a beetle art project on Thursday. We also caught a frog on Monday, which was pretty exciting!! Our focus will move away from insects this week and on to the changing of seasons. I can’t wait to celebrate all things fall with my Nature School kids!

What a wonderful first week of Nature School! We were searching for all the crawling, flying little critters this week and we certainly found a lot! On Monday the kids each had their own scavenger hunt to check off what they saw and today we worked as a team and made a chart with all of our findings.

This is our third week back for our spring semester of Nature School and we have had so much fun! Here’s a little photo recap of the first two weeks. 🩷

We worked on identifying evergreen trees based on needles, cones and bark, made bark rubbings and nests, learned about birds and played in the mud. There were some really warm days and also a day that we caught snowflakes on our tongues. The weather might be unpredictable at this time of year, but the kids are always ready to explore and have fun. What a wonderful group of little humans I get to work with!

This morning we looked for “signs of Spring” and the kids took their job very seriously. 😊

We had the most amazing weather for class today! I’m so thankful to spend time leaning and exploring with these amazing kids! Today we looked for animal tracks (found lots of dog prints!) and talked about what animals do in the winter time to keep warm. We also learned about the subnivian zone.

We had a “Winter Wonderland” for nature school this morning and it was incredible! The weather was perfect and the kids had THE best time together in the snow.

Another fun morning in the books at Nature School today! It was chilly, but no one seemed to mind. We talked about and looked for moss today. I absolutely love getting to be outdoors with all of these awesome kids.

Here are a few pictures from last Thursday. We had the most wonderful morning together and it ended up being a lot warmer than I expected. We continued our search for fungi, played in the leaves, went “fishing” and got to look at the frost in the microscope.

The morning started out chilly, but the sun warmed us all up! We had tons of fun in the cottonwood leaves today, learned about fungi, and built some forts. It was such a gorgeous day!

Had a fun Halloween morning today! The frost and fog were so beautiful. They made nature potions, did eyeball races and did some exploring.