I'm trying to make sure we do one of these per week as part of Short Pants' homeschooling. For the past few weeks we've had a special visitor at our birdfeeder on the front balcony. The boys have named him "Squirrely"
Short Pants and Pita Pocket get so excited every time they see him. Watching Squirrely has become one of their new favorite things to do. Though we have woods all around we don't see squirrels all that often here. Whether that's because of our cats or because the squirrels prefer the deeper woods to our yard I don't know. It's been a real treat for the boys to be able to observe a squirrel so closely:
We set some corn out for Squirrely, but he prefers the bird seed:
We read in The Handbook of Nature Study that squirrels have short legs since their legs are not used for running but instead jumping. Squirrely's leaps back and forth from the branches of our pine tree have certainly given the boys a chance to observe that:
Short Pants and Pita also thought it was funny to learn that squirrels use their fluffy tails as umbrellas in the rain and blankets in the cold. They enjoyed watching Squirrely use his claws so cleverly to hold seeds and hearing about how strong his teeth are:
This challenge stretched over several days - a few to watch Squirrely, another to read about squirrels, and several days of watching for squirrels while out and about. Short Pants declined to draw in his nature journal, which seems to always happen when we don't complete a challenge in one afternoon. That's ok because at the rate Squirrely is eating our bird seed Short Pants will have plenty of opportunity to draw him!
