It is EASY to connect with nature! Try the following activities.

1. 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 corectly 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.

2. 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.

3. 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?

4. 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?

5. 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.

6. 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 focussing distnace. 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.

7. 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 th 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.

8.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.

9. Measure and compare the 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.

10. 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.

11. 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