A Day at the Nature Center

Today, in anticipation of mid fifties and sunshine, I decided we'd go to the local Nature Center for school.

Not only did we get to cash in on the field trip groups, by sneaking into the sugar house between BIG groups, we got a small private explanation of the syrup evaporation and we also got to wander and do our own things. The best of both worlds.

Here's the 1870's Sugarhouse:

And inside, learning about the evaporation process:

We also saw both the modern metal collection buckets, and the recreation of the Native American methods with a wood spigot (they have some other name, though ... I can't recall at the moment) and birch bark collection bucket.

We walked along the river trail to get to the Sugar House, which at one point was literally both river and trail. Fortunately it was right near a path to the road, and we circumvented the underwater part.

We also took notebooks, in which the children wrote down the things they saw, sketched pictures, and took notes.

Even Buzz got in on the notebook action:

Whooops! I almost forgot my favorite picture from the day ~ a lucky shot macro of a teeny tiny spider. It was only 3-4 mm and I wasn't even sure it WAS a spider until it moved! I spent the latter part of the afternoon trying to identify him.

If you click on his photo, it'll take you to my flickr photostream, which have a few more nature-y pictures of our trip today (I didn't want to overwhelm my dialup friends), if you like that stuff.

All in all, it was a very nice day.