In the Forest!

Everybody Smile! What a beautiful day for a field trip to the forest. We are all excited to be at UBC and learn about the Temperate Rain Forest habitat.

Our naturalist taught us about how insects slow down in the winter because the cold air cools their bodies. She made a bug oven to heat one up and demonstrate how insects become much more active when they are warm. Cool!

We played a game called "Meet a Tree". We covered our eyes with a blind fold and a friend lead us to a tree. We used our hands to feel the bark, the lichen, and the moss. We tried to remember all the things we were touching. Then, our partner lead us away from the tree and took off the blind fold. Our challenge was to find the tree that we had just been touching! This was hard to do!

We learned that as plants and animals in a habitat die they decompose and provide food for the new growing plants and animals. Mushrooms are an important decomposer in a forest. We saw so many different kinds! Our favourites were the: Poison Pie, the Coral Mushroom, the Dead Man's Finger, and the cute little tiny brown mushrooms that were smaller than the tip of a pencil!
Another one of the beautiful plants we saw was called a 'sword fern'. It makes a great place for the small little animals of the forest, such as squirrels and mice, to hide under when they are in danger of being hunted. We played a game called "Owl Hunting", it was such fun - we hid like the little animals behind trees and rocks while the 'owl' tried to spot us by using only his or her eyes.