Observation/Search Skills; Animals in Winter

The temperature outside was in the teens during our last meeting, so we stayed in and enjoyed our hot chocolate!  Since observation/search skills are important to anyone interested in finding and observing specific parts of nature (spotting sunning reptiles, finding bird nests, locating specific plants, observing how a chipmunk chews into an acorn, watching an insect clean its antennae, etc.), we exercised these skills with two indoor activities:

1. "Camouflage:"
What you need:

• smallish objects (we had 14) - ex: large paper clip, small model alligator, purple post-it pad
• lists of those objects (one for each participant)
• clipboard and pencil for each participant

Everyone takes a good look at all of the objects spread out on a table and then they leave the room for several minutes while one person places the objects around the room.  The idea is for the objects to be camouflaged by their colors, shapes or materials against the background where they are placed.  Important:  the objects must not be hidden - in other words, no putting them out of sight behind, under, or inside of something else; they are visible, but camouflaged.  Also, they should not be above eye level, and - we added - below our knees.

Let the searchers into the room.  Each has a list on a clipboard and a pencil.  The goal is to be the first to find all of the objects, and the winner must be able to point out all of the objects after declaring him/herself the winner.  Important:  as searchers locate objects, they do not react in any way in order not to clue in the other players; making a check mark on the list should happen well away from the object.  The winner gets to hide the objects in the next round.  This was surprisingly challenging! (We played this later in our class, and so had time for only 1 round.)

2. "What's Different?"
What you need:

• at least 3 players

One player volunteers to leave the room and change one thing about his or her appearance - ex:  untie one shoe, make a small cuff in one pant leg, remove a piece of jewelry.  Before this player has left the room to do this, everyone else has taken a good look at him/her.  On re-entering the room, the guessers carefully observe and try to identify what's different.  The first to correctly do this gets to be the next person leaving the room.  Everyone had a chance to change something about him/herself and we were very good at finding out "what's different!"

Animals in Winter

We thought about the animals that have not migrated for the winter.  We were fortunate to be able to borrow several local animals from the Needham Science Center to observe and discuss:
crayfish
spotted salamanders
toad
wood frog
painted turtle
These animals all had in common that they are cold-blooded and enter a period of dormancy to survive the winter.  We talked about how their normal food sources are hard to come by in the winter (ex: insects or worms for the toad) and how cold temperatures affect their bodies.  We are amazed that wood frogs' bodies can actually freeze in frigid temps without killing them.

We also explored how well fur, fat, and wool insulate bodies against the cold by holding these between our hands and a large block of ice (in a large ziplock baggie). 

Winter Scavenger Hunt and Bag Project

The ground was mostly snow-covered today, but not deep, and the temp was in the 40's.  We went outside for a winter scavenger hunt.

We were all one team, and our instructor promised us a "reward" if we found 8 of the 10 things we were searching for:

Winter Scavenger Hunt

____ Deer tracks

____ Tracks from another animal

____ Tree or shrub with berries still on it

____ Evidence of animal feeding

____ Scat

____ A bird calling

____ Hole in the ground where an animal may be wintering

____ Hole in a tree where an animal may be wintering

____ Ice

____ Nest (bird or squirrel)

We started searching along the shrubby, weedy edge of the sports fields where we found dog and deer tracks, deer droppings (scat), ice, birds calling, a bird's nest, shrubs with berries still on them and a largish hole in the ground where an animal might be wintering.  Then we entered the trail in the woods and found a hole in a tree and evidence of animal feeding (neatly clipped weeds in the field - rabbit? and lots of bittersweet berries on the ground).  

So, we found all 10!  Our reward, back at the Science Center was brownies - one to eat there, and one to take home as an extra reward for finding all 10.

We finished our posters to encourage shoppers to use reusable bags.  They were put in grocery stores the next day.  We also wrote thank you notes to Trader Joe's for the bag donations.  

 

Reusable Bags Project and Exploring a new Trail

At a previous class, we brainstormed some "green actions" that we would like to try.  One of them was reminding shoppers that reusable bags help the environment by taking the place of plastic and paper shopping bags.  In this post there is information about how some stores in Needham are encouraging customers to use reusable bags (see below).  We are also creating posters to remind shoppers.  Look for our posters soon at Sudbury Farms, Roche Bros., and Volante Farm.

Here is some information about Plastic Bags:*

• An estimated 100 billion plastic bags are used in the US every year.
• Worldwide, an estimated 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are used.
• Less than 3% of plastic bags end up being recycled; the rest end up in landfills, oceans, and as litter.
• 4 out of 10 people believe that plastic bags will biodegrade, even though they won't.
• In landfills, plastic bags would take about 1,000 years to decompose, releasing toxic chemicals in the soil as they decompose.
• In our oceans, plastic debris was found in 75% of dead sea turtles in 2002.
• There are reports of problems with entanglement or ingestion of marine debris, including plastic bags, in 86% of all known species of sea turtles.
• An EPA ranking of chemicals that produce the most hazardous waste showed 5 of the top 6 were used by the plastics industry.
• An estimated 12 million barrels of oil is required to produce the plastic bags used in the US each year.

Good News:

•  Reusing just one bag in your daily life, can "eliminate" about 6 plastic bags each week; saving 6 bags a week works out to 288 bags a year.
• Adopting the use of reusable bags for one's entire life can "save" (reduce) the need for over 20,000 plastic bags.

 Did you Know?

"Free" grocery bags are not really free.  Many stores offer credits for shoppers who bring their own bags instead of using plastic or paper.  Although grocery stores offer bags for "free," the stores have to pay for the bags and pass those costs on to the consumer via higher prices on items in the store.  Stores provide credits to customers who bring their own bags as a way of not "charging" those customers for "free" bags.   Over time, the reusable bag will pay for itself and could eventually actually save you money on your grocery purchase.

*Info from www.reusablebagsdepot.com

Here's what some Needham stores are doing to encourage reusable bag use:

Roche Bros./Sudbury Farms

Reusable bags are available for sale at the front of the store, behind the check-out (2 kinds -$ .99 and 2/$3.00).  Customers who bring their own bags receive a $.05 rebate for each bag, OR they can opt to donate the rebate to Children's Hospital, Boston.  Pooling the rebate funds, Roche Bros. hopes to donate about $50,000 to Children's Hospital each year.

Trader Joe's

There are a variety of sizes and styles of bags, ranging from $.99 to $5.99, for sale at the front of the store, behind the check-out.  Customers who bring their own bags may fill out a raffle ticket; the winner receives a $25 gift certificate to Trader Joe's.  (Katie Catka, a "Captain" at Trader Joe's volunteered to give each member of our class a reusable bag!  Thank you!)

Volante Farm

Reusable bags are available for sale for $.99 at each cash register.

CVS

If you are an ExtraCare cardholder, you can purchase a Green Bag Tag for $1.  Attach this tag to your reusable bag, or present it when you re-use a shopping bag, AND present your ExtraCare card.  You will get $1 ExtraBucks Rewards every 4th visit using your Green Bag Tag.  Anytime you decline a one-time use plastic bag, you will receive a Green Bag Tag credit. Limit of one use/scan of the Green Bag Tag per day per household. The tag is made with corn-based material. 

If we get more information about other stores, we will include it in a future post.

What we did at last week's class:

First, we got ready to go outside.  

We walked 2/3 of the way around the loop trail in Eastman Conservation area behind Newman School, and decided to explore a dead-end spur of the trail that leaves the main trail at the big rock.  The ground was mostly snow-covered.  We were pretty much guessing where the trail was, kind of bush-whacking in places.  We found 2 lean-to shelters of sticks - made by local kids, we guess. Also found lots of deer tracks, a surprisingly large mound of pine cone scales at the base of a tree - "someone" had a feast!  Squirrel - red or gray?  A pile like this is called a "midden." We also noticed a large - maybe 6" wide - freshly dug hole at the base of a tree.  Maybe a skunk is using this hole?  The trail was short and ended when the higher ground that it was on was surrounded on 3 sides by swamp; we were basically on a peninsula in the swamp.

Back at the Science Center, after warming up with hot chocolate, we paired or tripled up to design posters about reusable bags to put in stores.  We got a good start and will finish next week. 

White Pine trees and secrets of scat

The first class in January was on a very cold day, so we were outside for just a short time.  (Our hand-warmers kept our hands toasty again.)  We found a large white pine tree beside Newman School.  W-H-I-T-E has 5 letters and there are 5 needles in each needle packet (needles stuck together at one end) of a white pine tree.  We each stood with our backs against the trunk and then counted our steps outward until we were under the outer edge of the lowest branches.  Then we continued walking that same number of steps 3 more times away from the tree.  When we all stopped, we saw that we had created a big circle around the tree:  this is as far as the roots of a white pine tree spread!

We also learned that you can tell the age of a living white pine tree by counting its whorls of branches that are separated by the parts of the trunk without branches.

Back inside the science center, we had hot chocolate and then we examined the coyote scat that we found and our instructor collected from our last walk in December.  ("Scat" is another name for wild animals' droppings.)  She had taken it home, dried it for 3 weeks and then pulled it apart.  Inside were lots of bones, so she sealed them inside of covered petri dishes, and put all of the fur in a sealed bag.  We examined these under microscopes and hand lenses.  Before the scat was pulled apart, it was 5 inches long and dark gray with bits of bones on the outside.  It turns out that inside were 3 skulls, many bones and lots of gray fur.  There were no seeds, fruits or grasses.  We were able to see the teeth in the skulls pretty well and noticed that 2 skulls had teeth that looked like they belonged to a carnivore - sharp and jagged - and 1 skull had teeth that were taller and flatter.  Our instructor gave us diagrams of bones.  Here's what this coyote ate:  2 short-tailed shrews and 1 vole.

Here's a poem about scat that was found online:*

It starts with an "S" and it ends with "T"
It comes out of you and it comes out of me.
I know what you're thinking, but, don't say that.
The scientific word for that is scat.

You're walking through the woods and your nose goes "ooh."
You know some animal's laid scat near you.
It may seem gross, well that's O.K.
They don't have toilets to flush it away.
Now don't go screamin' and lose your lunch
If you picked it apart you could learn a bunch.

If you wanna found out what animals eat,
Take a good look at what they excrete.
Inside of their scat are all kinds of clues,
Parts of food their bodies can't use.

It tells us what they eat and it tells us who they are
That's what we know about scat so far.
If you wanna find out what animals are around,
The place to start looking is the scat on the ground.

*slightly abridged from "Scat Rap" written by Rodd Pemble, Mary Keebler and Andy Bennett, Great Smoky Mountain Institute.  Word adaptation and music by Peter Moore and Tom Ernst. 

Hand-warmers, pine cone bird feeders, exploring outside

The Green Rangers started this blog after having 2 classes in December, so we are going to share some of the things that we have done.  Maybe you would like to try them too!

We walked the loop trail in the Eastman Conservation Area behind Newman School in Needham, MA.  The trail is easy.  It took us about a 1/2 hr because we stopped to look at things.  We started at the pond, then went to the field, walked through the woods and then on the boardwalk through the swamp.  In the woods we found a log that had lots of scales from pine cones on it and scattered around it.  Also, there were pine cone cores with all of the scales missing.   The cones were from White Pine trees.  We decided that squirrels or chipmunks sat on the log while eating the pine cone seeds. 

We collected uneaten pine cones to bring back to the Science Center for a project next week.

Back at the Science Center, we made reusable hand-warmers.  Here is what you need:

• cotton flannel (we used 4" x 8" pieces)
• needle and thread
• rice
• measuring cup
• funnel
• sharpie markers

The flannel was folded in half (making a 4" x 4" square) and sewed up on 3 sides.  Then we used sharpie markers to put our initials on the warmers (we each had 2 warmers).  Some of us decorated them too.  Then we used a funnel and the measuring cup to pour 1/3 cup of rice inside.  The open side was then rolled over and sewn up.

When we put all of our 16 warmers in the microwave together, it takes 1 min. 45 sec. to heat them up to a comfortable temperature.  We can use them right away or put them in an insulated lunch bag to carry outside and then put them in our mittens or gloves when our hands start feeling cold.  They stay warm for about 20 minutes.  There is nothing to throw away afterward, like disposable hand-warmers!  We can use them again and again.

The next week, we explored a very short trail between Newman school and Cusick baseball field on Central Ave.  It took us only 3 minutes to walk the trail. When we got there, we tried out our hand-warmers (brought in the lunch bag).  They were nice and toasty warm! At the field we found lots of deer tracks and many deer droppings.  The tracks were very easy to see in the dirt of the baseball diamond and in the wet grass.  In the grassy outfield, we found a number of holes leading into tunnels.  The holes looked like they were 1-2 inches across.  We think that voles made these.  While we were there, a red-tailed hawk flew low overhead.  On the way back, we went a bit off of the trail where it looked like animals had traveled.  We found a coyote scat!  Our instructor collected it in a baggie.

Back at the Science Center, we made pine cone bird feeders.  Here's what you need:

• pine cones
• suet
• bird seed
• string
• newspaper
• knives for spreading suet
• latex-free gloves

This is messy, so we spread newspapers all over the tables and wore latex-free gloves.  We tied spring near the top of each pine cone.  The suet blocks were microwaved a little so that they were softer.  We used the knives to spread suet all over the cones and then rolled the cones in bird seed.  Then we wrapped the cones up in wax paper to bring them home.  We can hang them by the strings from the branches of shrubs or small trees.  Birds and squirrels love the seeds and suet.

About Green Rangers

The "Green Rangers" is an after-school environmental class for 4th-6th graders sponsored by the Needham Science Center and Green Kids Needham of Needham, MA. In our once-a-week class we will connect with our local environment through outdoor adventures and explorations. In this blog we will post about our activities so that kids outside of the class might try some of these activities with their families. We will also post about our environmental concerns and any green actions we plan to take.