Thursday Tadpoles, Week 3. How do animals keep warm in winter?

My objective with the toddler group was to help them understand that animals use body fat as a way to stay warm in the winter.  As winter approaches, many animals eat all they can in order to grow a thick layer of fat to store food and stay warm.  

Tadpole scientists are testing this theory by coating a finger in vegetable shortening and submerging it in ice water.  The water was very cold with bare fingers, but with a layer of fat?  Our finger stayed warm!  Wow!

In a similar way, we can wear warm coats to stay warm.  We learned a song about zipping up our jackets and sang it as we hiked.

Oh look, "there's a fungus among us among us among us.."  How beautiful!

We hiked all the way to Fairy Valley and had a snack to energize ourselves.  We also read Blueberries for Sal, by Robert McCloskey and Here comes Jack Frost by Kazuno Kohara.  

Finally, we hiked over to sliding rock for some slippy fun and found a great fallen log to sit on.  

See you next week!

Teacher Kathleen