Nature Study-Ponds and Creeks

It has been all about ponds and creeks around here lately. Of course, we started with books.....

a lot of books!

Our favorites are the Jim Arnosky books. His website is full of great information, and super coloring pages.

We have been doing all this reading and were very full of knowledge, so today we headed up Mt. Hope in search of whatever we could find.

Off we go!!! Turn around Kim, and follow the group!

We trekked through the woods, until we came to the creek. The kids decided to follow the water upstream and see what they could find.

They walked and walked,

and found little cliffs,

cute waterfalls,
and
steep rocks. What they didn't find was the beginning of the creek, but instead, a corn field. Well, we do live in farm country.
" Hold onto Luke, Becky!"
It was tricky to keep your flip flops on while scaling the "cliffs".

Now on to our nature finds. We saw cattails, and alot of duckweed.

Mark discovered big deer tracks, showing that the deer enjoy this creek.

Notice Gracie's visor. She and Mark made these at the library craft earlier this week.
A leopard (?) frog
A leopard froglet with its tail still on a nice sized crawdad- that we were going to keep- but Luke dumped it out when no one was looking
We found a whole bunch of newtlets. We also came home and learned about the lifecycle of newts.

This very pretty snail was next to the trail on the way out of the woods.

We all did manage to get muddy, wet, and dirty. Kim fell in, but didn't seem to mind,

except for her finger.
This is what happens when you take a two year, without a nap, into the woods, to look for nature. So much for dinner.