Outdoor Hour Challenge Week 2

We reached a suitable bench in the park on our nature study morning and sat down. I asked the children to be still and quiet.

What did they see?

• trees, grass, people, benches, leaves fallen from the trees

What did they hear?

• birds singing, the wind gently blowing through the branches, people talking, cars driving along the road nearby, a lion roaring (OK, that's because the local town zoo is quite near!) 

How did they feel?

• a little cold today 

Red squirrel

We looked out for interesting things as we continued on our walk. Sophie started collecting acorns and we talked about how the squirrels were storing them up for the winter. Then we heard a noise and saw three squirrels chasing each other through the trees - one was red, one was black and one was grey. We tried to take pictures but they were too fast.

Crab apple tree

We saw lots more crab apples on the ground and collected some fallen crab apples leaves for our nature notebook.







We also saw an interesting tree we hadn't seen before. There were lots of oak leaves on the ground and Charis found a huge one that we took home.

Green moss on tree stump

We noticed lots of clumps of mushrooms around old tree stumps, and lots of trees had green moss on. Sophie pointed out a tree that had 'yellow moss' instead, which I guessed was lichen (need to check that). There were lots of 'soldier bugs' around, and we saw how some had climbed quite high up the tree trunks. We wondered if perhaps they liked the moss.

Yellow lichen?

Chicory

The chicory flowers were still out, but not many other flowers.

On the way back we saw a dead mouse. Last week it was a dead dog. I wonder what dead animal we'll see next week!