animal tracking

A couple of days ago, I got out with the kid, fighting a very cold day. The kids were not that motivated to get out, and quite franckly, neither was I. BUT this new years's resolution being " we will get out every day eventhough it is super duper cold, we did get out, and braved the weather.

I decided that it might be fun to follow tracks in our backyard. There are many cats around, and I thought that would be a fun introduction to animal tracking. But surprise! aside from finding a couple of cat track, we also found a deer track, right in the middle of our backyard! So this little adventure of initiation to animal tracks, quickly turned into this really amazing and exciting observation day. (we even forgot about the cold weather!) We followed the tracks all around the backyard, trying to figure from where he came from , and where he was going. We had so much fun! But then, the following day, it snowed, and the tracks got covered.

This morning, when I work up, I looked out and knew another visitor had come during the night. There were fresh tracks again, right in the middle of our backyard. The kids were so anxious to go out and observe the tracks once more.

We followed the tracks, and looked again were they were coming from and where they were heading.

We walked alongside of trail, and figures it got in from one side , and got out after walking a whole circle in our backyard.

We stayed out looking at the tracks, and analysing the anatomy of the hoof for a while.

After we got in, we studied the anatomy of the hoof, and looked at pictures of tracks to make sure that again these were indeed deer tracks. We got a couple of good picture that allowed us to compare the print we saw to deer prints in image.

We looked up if deers are herbivores or carnivores, (since this is a concept that we have already talked about) and also tried to find out what we could use to attrack it here and get a chance to see it. Apples is the "bait" choosen for now.

I also got out the 3 parts card found at Montessori for everyone, and that gave us the chance to looks at other types of tracks that we might be able to see around here.

I am thinking about setting up a deer watching station near the back door, with a chair, and some books about it while the interest is high

So we'll set up an apple corner somewhere in the backyard this weekend to see if Mr Deer will be tempted again to come and visit us soon...