4.12.2013

Mammology for Minis

Our local area has a lot of neat, often free, activities and I'm really excited now that Lucy is getting old enough for us to take advantage of them. Two weeks ago we went to a "Mammology for Mini's" class.  Technically it was for 3-6 year olds but they didn't ask for ID so we snuck in :-)

It was really impressed by it. It started with circle time where she talked about the traits mammals have, showed different pictures of mammals and let the kids touch some furs.

Then we went for a hike. Of course, it had snowed two days before so the hike was not as long as it might have been but we did see some deer tracks.

Next up was station time. One station had pictures to color and animal and track stamps.
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Another was sand and life size tracks. Lucy didn't want to do it herself but she picked out a track for Daddy.
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My favorite was the animal pelts. We felt them and looked at the matching picture. This one was the beaver and we could feel how thick it was to keep the beaver warm in the cold water.

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Opposums. Fascinating but ugly. Our state's department of Conservation puts out a kid's magazine and last month's was all about opposums so I feel like I know all about them know. Then to top off our opposum experience, Craig just discovered that our compost pile invader is a opposum. I'm not sure if I like that because it means we are helping out a poor pitiful creature or if I'm grossed out because we are feeding what is basically a giant marsupial rat. Perhaps I'll just try not to think about it at all.

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Fox. Very pretty and I do believe Lucy's favorite.

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Bear. But not Winnie-the-Pooh.

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A skeleton. She said she thought it looked like a horse but we found out it was a fox.

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The last station (which was actually the first she did, but my pictures are not in order and I'm too lazy to mess with them :-) was probably her favorite. She sorted through a bin of animal puppets, dividing them into mammals and not mammals.

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I was pretty impressed by the program and by how much she retained. They really only stressed a few points but repeated them several times in different ways and between those and the hands-on portions, she knows a lot about mammals and loves to talk about them now!

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