It's tempting to assume that winter's arrival means less opportunity for outdoor learning. But if we have the option to be properly dressed, if it's not windy, and our learning activities involve more moving and less sitting, it's a great time to build resilience and even come to appreciate this colder half of the year.
No, really!
Understanding Earth and Space Systems: Seasonal Changes
Curriculum expectations are always based on the Ontario Ministry of
Expectations. Many of the activities will reinforce, rather than teach,
those expectations. As such, no assessment ideas or rubrics are
included.
Overall Expectations:
- assess the impact of daily and seasonal changes on living things, including humans;
- investigate daily and seasonal changes;
- demonstrate an understanding of what daily and seasonal changes are and of how these changes affect living things.
It is recommended that this unit be taught in late fall, when seasonal changes are most obvious.
Seasonal Walk and Squirrel's Nests
To prepare, collect
- thick branches that can be tied together to form a frame
- thin branches or willow whips which can be woven
- piles or bags of leaves
- evergreen boughs
- short lengths (two feet or less to avoid a choking hazard) of hemp twine or baler twine
- other natural materials: pine cones, feathers, vines (two feet lengths), etc
To complement and experience their learning in this unit, students can go on a 'seasonal change walk' with you in the school's naturalized area and observe how nature 'goes to sleep'. Emphasize that they use their senses: sight, hearing, touch, smell, but not taste. Together, observe the fallen leaves: their colors, their crumbly or slimy texture, their smell. After the longest day of year, months ago, trees start moving their nutrients and energies back down to their roots. They start growing some more roots to prepare for next spring's burst of growth. Fewer nutrients are devoted to the leaves as the growing season comes to a close. This eventually leads to the leaves dropping in the fall (the specifics of this process is taught in an older grade).
Birds can be more easily seen in trees without leaves. Do the bird look fatter than normal? Your students might assume that the birds bulked up for winter, but that's not the whole story. Songbirds that don't migrate fluff up their feathers in colder weather so that the trapped air acts as insulation for them. It's their down-filled coat!
Once leaves have fallen off the trees, more things can be seen. If there are trees in or around the schoolyard, see if you and your students can find 'leaf balls' in their branches. Ask the children if they know how those got there. Those leaf balls are nests, but they are not for birds, and they're not even called nests. Named 'dreys', (rhymes with 'days') it's where squirrels take shelter during the winter.
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| BirdPhotos.com |
You might see squirrels preparing for winter food storage by eating Norway maple keys. If there are evergreen trees around, you and your students might be able to spot squirrels nipping young twigs from those trees, and then run to the ground to fetch the cones or buds to store as a food source. Even if you don't see squirrels in the act, you may see the evidence: chewed pine cones on the ground; they look a bit like
apple cores. Squirrels eat or store the pine nuts inside the cones.
Divide your students into groups of four or five. Challenge each group to construct a drey, a squirrel's leaf nest. How on earth do squirrels do that?! Guide the students to learn about working together. Ask fifth grade students to help; they learn about about Structures and Mechanisms each year. How do you listen to each other and make decisions together? Does the project go better if each group has a leader?
"First, squirrels weave together a base of twigs to form a “basket” that
lays the foundation of the nest. Then, they collect soft, compressible
materials like leaves, paper, or moss. Next, they'll
weave a second, outer net of twigs around this material to keep it
compressed. Finally, they'll fill in gaps with more leaves or soft
material. In order to complete this surprisingly involved construction,
squirrels require a combination of rigid, soft, sturdy, and pliable
materials. Squirrels stay on the lookout for nest material constantly,
just like they never stop looking for food. They'll constantly collect twigs,
branches, leaves, moss, paper, vines, and anything else they
can use."*
When their nest is finished, students can take turns trying it out to check if it's cosy. Take pictures!
Project FeederWatch
As mentioned above, birds are much more easily seen once the leaves are off the trees.
Citizen Science is the collection of data by the general public, usually for a professional science organization. Project FeederWatch is such a citizen science project that connects the general public with the research of The Cornell Lab and Birds Canada. Young citizens put out one or more bird feeder and identify and count the birds that come to visit. If your class chooses to participate, you need to choose a site that your students could see from your classroom window. The site needs to include food (a feeder), water, (a bird bath or other water feature), and shelter (a shrub or tree).
The remaining information comes from the Project FeederWatch website. "The FeederWatch season always begins the second Saturday in November and runs for 21 weeks, ending on a Friday. The 2020–21 FeederWatch season begins on November 14 and ends on April 9. The last day to start a two-day count is April 8.
FeederWatch count days are two consecutive days when you count the birds at your feeders. Count days always come in pairs. Pick days that will maximize the time you have to count birds. Schedule your count days in advance, if possible. Do not change your count days just because you see remarkable numbers or kinds of birds. Doing so would bias your data. If you are unable to count during a particular week or count period, that’s okay. Your data are valuable even if you were only able to count on a few occasions.
Schedule each pair of count days at least 5 days apart (leave five days when you don’t count birds between each count). You may decide to count every Tuesday and Wednesday, for example. Counting once a week means that you can submit up to 21 bird counts–the number of weeks in the FeederWatch season. But it is fine to miss weeks. The more often you count, the more valuable your data becomes, but there is no minimum required number of counts."
*https://varmentguard.com/blog/squirrel-nests
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