Day #20/175 Days

Today was our second LC Bates class. It was all about "pond life." The boys & I had actually taken a two hour class of a similar title this summer but it was a very rainy day & we never made it to the actual pond. Today we never made it in to the museum. I'm pretty sure the boys enjoyed this more. At least these two did....

This is Happy with one of his friends. Whenever we get together these two want to play together. They are about 1-1/2 years apart (maybe 2?) but get along very well - usually.

The biggest excitement when we got down to the pond where two large snapping turtles (pretty sure they were of the snapping variety) were, well, um, "wrestling" in the middle of the pond. At least as far as we could tell - they may have actually been fighting but we were too far away to tell for sure which was probably a good thing.

There were tons of little frogs hanging out on lily pads. There were nets for all the kids to share & they went & scooped up some water or mud or muck or all the above & then went through it to see what they found.

I want to publicly thank my sister & Happy's little friends mom for taking on two of my boys as I held Mr. H & Miss H & Lego-Man was my roving photographer (he took most of these photos). Thanks everyone! I couldn't do this class without your help.

A couple small crayfish were also found. One of them (I think the smaller one) actually shed it's exoskeleton while it was in the container & Serena was passing around other critters for the kids to look at. That was pretty neat to see.

We ended the class with all the critters in containers & Serena explained what each one was & what their role in the ecosystem of the pond involved. We had asked Serena what the biggest find might be - that elusive critter that one doesn't always get to see - and she said it was a water scorpion. About five minutes later my nephew caught one in his net. That was interesting to see!

We found LOTS of frogs. That big one in the front is about two years old (according to Serena) but most were frogs hatched this very year. The kids also caught tadpoles, damselfly nymphs, dragonfly nymphs, whirligigs, and more!

The kids left happy and muddy so I call that a good day.

After the class we headed to one of the local parks & let the kids play. I didn't grab the camera & Lego-Man was too busy playing to snap photos. We stayed for about an hour & then headed home for nap time for Mr & Miss H.