The topic for our visit on March 10 was “Nature’s Builders and Excavators”.  Chris showed the children a nest with an egg and a bee hive and showed the children a stick that beavers use to build a dam.  They saw two turtles — a baby and a bigger red foot tortoise and a dutch rabbit that dig holes to make their homes.  He also showed them an alligator that builds and digs, using it’s whole body to excavate a holethat fills with water when it rains.  They were able to touch the turtles, hold the rabbit and look at the alligator.

Chris talked about how animals help each other.  For example, the little turtle digs a little hole and when it gets bigger it leaves the smaller hole for other animals; the beaver builds a dam on the river to make a pond for their family that other animals use too and they build a house in the middle of the pond so that other animals like wolves and bears don’t eat them.  The 4′s as usual absorbed a lot of information and had the many questions.  Some examples were “How old is the alligator?” (3 or 4 years old) “How big does the alligator get to be?”  (Male alligators can be almost as big as the width of the classroom and females from the wall to the edge of the rug.)

On March 11 Chris came for just the 3′s and 4′s rooms.  He showed them slides of his trip to the artic last summer.  They were able to see photos of birds that were camouflaged in the rocks, snow geese, a caribou, moose and many photos of polar bears.  He also had plaster impresssions of foot prints of a wolf and a polar bear.  He told the children that when he sees animals in nature that he leaves them there because nature is a beautiful place and that’s where we want them to be.  One of the polar bear cubs was called “Aurora” after the Aurora Borealis which he also had a photo of.  He had a photo of moose poop which in nature is called “scat” — a fact that brought a few giggles as you might imagine!

Chris also brought a very special visitor:  his German Shepherd, “Bella Stella Luna” called “Luna”.  He showed them how well trained she was – she followed commands for “sit” “down” “come” “stay” and “place”.  He emphasized that he was always kind to her.

The complete photo album can be viewed in Eileen’s Photos.