A Lifestyle of Learning: Week 3: Forest Habitats

We'll be taking a closer look at all the habitats, just not week after week. For last week we focused on forest because, well, it was easiest! We live near a lot of forests, but not too many rainforests or deserts.

This unit was the impetus to get out and explore. Sure, we're generally outside a lot, but we took the extra effort to visit local nature preserves and really LOOK at the different layers of the forest. For instance, we'd stop at a fallen-down tree and talk about what lives under it. We counted and photographed all the different mushrooms we saw and looked at the variations in spiderwebs. The kids collected nuts and then researched the different kinds. We made leaf rubbings and created a little book identifying common local trees. Oh, and we collected bugs, lots and lots of bugs. Our bug jar was like a rent-by-the-hour motel for a while.

Normally I would try to do more of a project-based approach to a unit, but this fit in so well with the weather and our area that I scrapped the planned projects for a larger, more nebulous but more important one -- Get Outside!