Last night, when I was laying in GB’s bed, saying goodnight, he said it had been a great day. So I asked him what had been the best part of the day. I was fully expecting him to say that he had really enjoyed his cousins coming over and having a huge, all-out nerf war. I’m still finding nerf bullets everywhere. I even found one on my aquarium glass! But he surprised me. He said it was a great day because he had his nature class. Isn’t that cute? I’m so glad he’s enjoying this.

This week’s subject was ‘mammals.’ This is a subject near and dear to GB. He loves animals. Christen, the park ranger who leads the group, is coming to know the children by name. She told us that she had noticed several kids who had a look of revulsion on their faces when we all walked in the door. That’s because the tables were filled with taxidermy animals. So she took a moment to explain that all the animals that they use for this class died of natural causes, or were killed by cars. Then they are only used to educate. GB was one of those children. He even raised his hand to ask why people didn’t drive more carefully. Once again…. cute! I love his little animal-loving heart.

In this photo, he’s stroking a bear skin. Once he got over the fact that these were once real animals, he was able to enjoy the chance to touch real animals with no fear of him scaring them, or them attacking him. The bear skin was really soft. And you could even see his paws with claws.

The little baby deer was heart-breakingly adorable. GB stroked them as if they were still alive and needed comforting.

I was shocked to discover that we have bobcats, coyotes, and minks running around our park. The mink was so cute. GB was a little dismayed to learn that his Grandma has a mink coat.

After separating the hair of the beaver, we were able to see the under coat. The taxidermy guy had removed the sharp bristles that usually cover the beaver. This gave the kids the opportunity to really observe him. I should have got a shot of the paddle on his backside because that was really neat. And his paws were webbed to make swimming easier.

This is what we learned today:

Mammal Characteristics

• All mammals are warm blooded.

• Most young are born alive.

• They have hair or fur on their bodies.

• Every mammal is a vertebrate.

• All mammals have lungs to breathe air.

• Mammals feed milk to their babies.

We also touched on the animal classification system. GB and I are going to have to delve into that with a little more depth soon. Maybe I’ll make a unit study for it for next year.

After the class portion comes GB’s favorite part, the outside part. We all tromped through the park trying to find animal tracks. Christen told us that last week when we went out for the archeology dig, she actually saw some coyote scat on the ground. But it was pretty fresh and she didn’t want to get us off track. So, of course, all the kids were convinced that they would find coyote tracks. But this was all we found:

Regular old deer tracks. We actually have quite a few of these in our yard right now. I saw them when I went out to the mailbox. Guess who the last kids to leave the park were? GB and his new friend, H. They were enjoying looking for predator tracks….LOL!