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Explore The Outdoors
by clicking the logo below! Complete 8 of 10 activities and earn
your Explore The Outdoors Certificate!
Check out
the Scavenger Hunt! at Wolf Run Park
Below are coloring pages of things you can find at
Wolf Run Regional Park. Click on a picture to download and print
a coloring page.
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker
Wolf Run Regional Park
receives visits from a state endangered woodpecker, the yellow-bellied
sapsucker. On a recent
hike at Wolf Run, telltale signs of sapsucker activity were
discovered on the Woodland trail.
Yellow-bellied sapsuckers exhibit a unique behavior
when drilling holes in trees. They drill orderly rows of very small
(smaller than a dime) holes in trees, returning later to dine on
the bleeding sap and small insects attracted to the sap.
 Read
more about the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker
 Hear
the sound of a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker
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- Go on a Bug Hunt Equip your child with
a baby food jar or bug jar and encourage them to look for natural
life around them. Look under leaves & stumps (be sure to turn
them back over), on tree trunks & leaves and in flowers. Handle
the bugs gently and let them go when you are done. Name your favorite
bug according to its colors, the way it moves or something different
about it.
- Listen to the World Around You Have your
child sit and listen to the sounds of nature by closing their
eyes, and counting on their fingers the different sounds they
hear. Compare natural vs. unnatural sounds. Try this in several
different habitats such as in a field, near a pond and in a forest
and compare the kinds and numbers of sounds heard.
- Look at Nature Before a visit to a park,
have your child decorate two toilet paper rolls. Staple them together
to make mini-binoculars. Take them outside for a game of "I Spy"
looking for items from nature. Look for things near by, in middle
range and far away.
- Get a New Perspective
Have your child lie face upward under a large tree. Have them
look into the branches. Can they see the top branch? What patterns
can they see. What other things are present? They can pretend
to be the roots of the tree in the soil. What do they feel like?
What animals can they see moving around in the tree?
- Use Imagination Choose an area with natural
ground coverings such as leaves, cones, wild grass etc. and sit
down. Give your child 6 short pieces of straw or toothpicks. Have
them pretend to shrink down to the size of an ant with you. Their
job is to lead a nature walk for creatures the size of an ant
by choosing 6 interesting things along a one meter stretch of
ground. Encourage them to use their imagination!
- Wet Noses Wet the underside
of your child's nose with a small wet sponge. This improves their
sense of smell just as it does for deer and rabbits.. Find familiar
smells such as flowers to try, then go on to other things like
rubbing a leaf between your fingers and smelling or scratching
a pine needle. Also try moss, bark, pitch or grabbing an handful
of leafy soil etc.
- Discover Color in Nature
Get 10 old paint swatches of various natural colors from a
paint store. Cut them into individual squares and take these and
your child to a natural area. One at a time, have your child look
for each color in nature. You will be amazed at what colors you
can find if you really look!
- Touching Nature Blindfold your child and
lead them to a tree to get to know it by feeling the bark texture,
finding branches and any other way to recognize a specific tree
without looking at it. Still blind-folded, lead your child back
to where you started. Now take off the blindfold and have them
try to find their tree using their sense of touch to confirm it.
What other senses helped them to locate their tree? (sounds, sense
of balance, smells, warmth etc.)
- A Night time Experience
Go with your child to a safe natural place at night. Cover
your flashlight with red plastic so you won't startle the animals.
Try out some of the ideas above to learn about plants & animals
of the night. It takes about 20 minutes for your eyes to fully
adjust from bright light to darkness.
- A Rainy Day Experience
Dress to stay dry but with your hands free (no umbrellas) and
go out on a rainy day with your child. Peek into puddles, listen
for bird & frog calls. How many kinds of raindrops can you
see? Can you find plants with a drip tip? Try to find out where
animals go when it is raining.
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- Go on a hibernating bug hunt!
Shine a light under bark looking for hibernating lady bugs, spiders,
butterflies, or cocoons. Check out holes in trees, look on branch
tips for sleeping moth eggs. On warmish days, watch for tiny pieces
of dirt that seem to jump on the snow. These are snow fleas, more
correctly called Springtails or Collembola, tiny insects that
scavenge the snow for bits of food. These bugs are what the tiny
chickadees and woodpeckers are looking for as they probe with
their beaks.
- Go outside and find evidence of the different
ways animals cope with winter. North-south and vertical
migration, true hibernation, napping, storing fat, camouflage,
growing a thick coat, fluffing their feathers, sleeping in tree
cavities, storing food, eating different foods and shedding antlers
are all ways animals adapt to winter.
- Experiment with food choices of wintering
birds at your feeder. Provide several choices in different
feeders located near each other. Measure how much of each you
put out. Record the daily temperature and and note how much of
each food is left at the end of each day. Is there a relationship
between temperature and what the birds eat more of? Try providing
black oil sunflower seeds, raisins, nuts, natural peanut butter
and suet. Also record the types of birds you see at your feeder
and the general weather. This may help to explain some of what
you see. What other things may affect the results? (the number
of birds visiting the feeder) Try the same experiment in the spring
during warmer weather to compare the results. How do the results
compare? What conclusions, if any, can you draw from this? How
would you change the experiment if you were to try it again?
- Look closely for buds on trees and shrubs
in winter. Most deciduous trees will form a winter bud
in the fall to protect the developing leaf inside. Conifers do
not form this bud until the spring. Try "forcing" a bud by taking
a small cutting and placing it indoors in sugary water near a
window for a week or so. What happens?
- Listen to the sounds of winter. Inside
your mittens, make a fist and hold it at shoulder height. For
each sound you hear, raise one finger. How many different sounds
can you hear? What kinds of sounds do you hear? You may want to
write them down so you can compare them with sounds you hear at
the same spot in the summer.
- Really look at nature. Close your
eyes and have someone else find something nearby from nature for
you to look at. Have them carefully lead you to the object with
your eyes closed. When you get there, they place your face so
that you will be able to look directly at the item, within focusing
distance. When they touch your thumb, you open your eyes and look
at the object as if you are taking a picture, then when they touch
your thumb again, you close your eyes. With your eyes still closed,
describe the object to the other person. You will have a vivid
image in your mind which you will not soon forget.
- Follow animal tracks in the snow.
A trail of tracks often tells a story of the habits of an animal
in the winter. A tiny mouse scampers about on the snow surface
looking for seeds that are blown by the winter wind then darts
back to its tunnel. A daring rabbit leaves the protection of a
thicket and gets grabbed by a hunting owl, the rabbit tracks disappear
from the snow and an imprint is left by the wing brushing the
surface of the snow. Deep tracks indicate a large heavy animal.
Try leaving your own fake animal tracks that tell a story. Look
for other signs such as nibbled twigs and dug holes.
- Measure the snow. Determine how
much snow has fallen to date and measure the snowpack to see how
much has accumulated. Try melting a known volume of snow in a
pot to see how much water is actually in snow. Compare its melted
volume with the snow volume.
- Measure temperatures and compare. Take
temperatures of the air and snow, the snow at the surface, snow
down at 25 cm and snow at 100cm. How would this help the animals
that use the snow for protection from the cold? Would this help
the animals hibernating under the snow? How? Try digging down
to the soil surface in a natural area and brush away the snow
to look for signs of animals living under the snow. Mouse tunnels,
seeds, droppings etc can often be found. Make sure to fill in
your hole after your search.
- Determine the thickness of ice and how
quickly it changes. From a secure area such as a permanent
dock, chop a hole in the ice every week starting with the first
ice in the autumn and measure the thickness of the ice. Record
daily temperatures for the same time period. Stop when the ice
gets too thick to chop. Graph this data and try to explain why
the ice thickness changed as it did.
- Make a quinzee or snow fort. Measure
the air temperature outside and go inside. Take the temperature
several times in the first 10 minutes of sitting inside it. What
happens to the temperature? Why does this happen? What is the
warmest temperature you can get inside the quinzee?
Activities compliments of Nature
Activities for Children
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