Mushrooms | Lettuce and Snow Cakes | 3.4.2015

In anticipation of the coming snow and rain we’ve prepared a few treats for the classroom.  Caregivers, join us in the classroom tomorrow morning for our next Mushrooms meetup (age 1-3).  UPDATED:  DUE TO SCHOOL DELAYS, MUSHROOMS WILL MEET 10-11AM (instead of 9-10).  Please RSVP BELOW. 

We’ll bring out some snow trays and miniature wonderland scenes, with natural materials and treasures to pack and play with.  Bring your sense of adventure to our indoor snow kitchen experiment. 

Notice anything similar about these little scenes?  Hunting on the snow we found a variety of branches.  Many of them have seeds, and don’t they all look different?  Smooth, spiky, and silky, the snow was littered with signs of winter.  We’ll chat winter branches and seeds.  Where did they come from?  Who might be looking for these treasures? 

Has anyone been freezing snow cookies, brownies and cakes? Bring them along to share with the group!

You’ll leave with a homemade suet “cake” for the birds, covered in…. what are they?  More Seeds!

Also in the classroom, we have chores to do, books to read with your little ones and look what happened!

Lettuce seedlings!  Last time we saw these they were tiny seeds we placed in pop bottle planters, remember?  Since then, we’ve delivered over 500 plants to second graders in Greenwich.

We’ll do a demo to transplant them into peat pots so you can take one home and join the community lettuce challenge on your windowsill.

Please RSVP to youth.director @ gecgreenwich.org or pre-register online at http://gecgreenwich.org/mushrooms.html

Hope to see you tomorrow.  Weather.gov for Cos Cob is currently predicting a hazardous weather outlook.  Please check the Greenwich Public Schools for any delay before heading out.  Drive safely.

• Tonight Rain, snow, freezing rain, and sleet, becoming all rain after midnight. Temperature rising to around 35 by 1am. Wind chill values between 25 and 30. South wind 9 to 11 mph becoming southwest after midnight. Chance of precipitation is 100%. New ice accumulation of less than a 0.1 of an inch possible. New snow and sleet accumulation of around an inch possible.
• Wednesday Light rain likely, mainly after 5pm. Cloudy, with a high near 40. Wind chill values between 25 and 35. West wind 6 to 8 mph. Chance of precipitation is 60%. New precipitation amounts between a tenth and quarter of an inch possible.

Thanks for supporting GEC Youth Programs.  Together we’re planting the seeds of lifelong learning, healthy living, and good stewardship.

Warm Regards,
Deanna

Mushrooms | age 1-3 | starting March 4th bring your frozen baked goods to share

Looking forward to returning to new mushrooms sessions starting March 4th. In the meantime, has anyone created any new frozen “baked” goods? For open house we baked this lovely ice bundt cake with rosemary branches to play with in our Pinetum snow kitchen, behind the classroom.

We also love to have a winter egg basket full of ice Muffins, with a variety of hidden rock treasures inside.  Check them out
These evenings are perfect for ice “baking.” Simply fill fun kitchen containers with water and surprises, and set them out on the patio. If you put snow in as well, you’ll find a difference in the clarity of the ice. Give it a try, frost and ice with natural surprises or left over holiday sprinkles and ingredients from the cupboard.

Won’t it be fun to see the change in our evening ice experiments as our days and evenings get warmer? It’s right around the corner.

We hope you’ll bring your favorite homemade ice treats to our next mushrooms meet up on March 4th, for a fun “bake sale” share, 9-10am. Please pre-register at http://www.gecgreenwich.org/mushrooms.html

Mushrooms 2.4.2015 Snow to stomp in & treasures to uncover

Dear Mushrooms,

What an exciting week the winter has brought us!  The days are getting longer and brighter, but it seems to be colder and wintrier than ever.  How does that work?  During our Family Nature Play walk and talk with Greenwich Director of Conservation, Denise Savageau, on the first day of winter, we got to thinking about how oceans and bodies of water will hold heat and regulate temperatures.  We also said we would think about, watch (and play!) with water molecules all winter.  It is so important to notice and celebrate how water floats in the winter, allowing life to survive under the ice.

For the caregivers and teachers who walk with our mushrooms to ponder:

Winter reading for the water/wildlife curious: Bernd Heinrich, Winter World

“There is something quite remarkable, simple, and yet profoundly important that happens when water turns to ice in a pond.  Compare this with what transpires when water turns to ice in a cloud.  In a cloud, the ice crystals fall because water and ice are heavier than air and the gas phase of water.  However, water becomes lighter when it transforms from a liquid to a solid state.  If this were otherwise, the ice crystals would sink as soon as they formed on the surface of a pond.  Heat near the bottom of the water would at first continually melt the ice crystals coming down, but at some point temperatures near the bottom would reach 0’C and lower.  The water would then freeze from the bottom up, rather than from the top down.  The ecological consequence of this phenomenon would be that there would be no bodies of water in the the north.  Sunshine in the summer would melt only the upper layers of ice, and any aspiring body of water would soon become a huge permafrosted ice lens.”

Our wondering about water this winter has certainly changed the way we look at our reflection pond.  Luckily, last week we also got an excellent fresh coat of snow, and a few dedicated mushrooms were able to take a walk around the pond together, a little delayed due to weather, but we made some important discoveries that will guide our exploring tomorrow morning.

For the mushrooms.  Do you remember last week when:

• We noticed several kinds of ice on top of the pond, puddles near the entrance, near a pipe.
• We saw different tracks in the snow, some that went across the snow and ice.  We tried to make our own tiny tracks like little hopping birds, and even made giant leaps in the snow, like the deep strides of deer tracks all over the Pinetum!  These are some of the deer I saw by the listening fountain in the Autumn.  I wonder if those are the same ones making the tracks in the snow now?

https://flic.kr/p/pBRovg

• We were able to see the snow was not as deep under heavy branches, and then collected some fallen white pine needles to use as paintbrushes in the snow.  We tried them out in the classroom with white paint on blue paper too.
• My favorite part was when we found a giant rock.  The rock was so covered in snow that we barely recognized it, but a little dusting off and there it was!  It was different climbing on this rock in snowy weather.  The top was slippery, but the ground below was soft and fluffy to roll in.  I love to see a favorite spot change with the weather, and to feel like you get to know a place so well, that even if it’s covered in snow, you know where you are.

Tomorrow: 

We’re taking inspiration from our rock discovery.  We’ll cover up several treasures in snow and ice and get to dig and melt them out, and continue our tracking adventures.  Maybe we’ll see if we can try out some cardboard tracks.  Let’s start outside in the snow kitchen, under the charter oak (behind the classroom), and when we get chilly, we can come inside to hide some treasures under our “snow” blanket, do some classroom chores like watering that moss table, and we can warm up with a story.

https://flic.kr/p/r3E2Nr

Bundle up again.  Weather.gov for Cos Cob predicts:

A chance of light snow, mainly before 8am. Cloudy, with a high near 39. Wind chill values between 20 and 30. Light south wind becoming southwest 5 to 9 mph in the morning. Winds could gust as high as 21 mph. Chance of precipitation is 30%

Please sign up in advance if possible at http://gecgreenwich.org/mushrooms.html

Warm Regards,

Ms. D