Look At Those Tracks In The Snow

~ True solitude is a din of birdsong, seething leaves, whirling colours, or a clamor of tracks in the snow.~ Edward Hoagland

Children often gather at the window gazing and wondering about the world beyond it. Looking closely... ever-so-closely... some children noticed teeny tiny tracks in the freshly fallen snow.

"Look! Look! Right there! At the bottom... by the bush."

"Yeah. I see 'em. The birds were eating the feeders. They ate mine."

When the children notice and become interested in their world, we wonder with them. We enter into the magic of wondering and discovering like the children do.

We wondered with the children about the type of birds that visited the feeders.

Taking pictures of the many tracks will help us to compare them to some of the ones in the books we are looking at. 

Children like evidence! Some of the tracks were from birds.

 Others were not!

There were questions to be answered.

First thing in the morning, with interest of tracks in the snow sparked, children noticed tracks just beyond our playground. Of course, further investigation was in order.

These, they decided, were definitely NOT bird tracks! "Maybe it's from a bunny? My mommy saw a bunny one day."  "I saw a bunny in my back yard."

                 

"Let's follow them. There's a trail."  

"Where do you think it will lead to?  Will it lead us to the bushes?"

                                                  

The trail led us to a tree. There was talk of bunnies, holes in the tree, hibernation and squirrels! And it didn't stop there. One set of tracks led to the discovery of another type of tracks. The children compared the size of their hands to this new set. They immediately decided that these tracks were from a dog... a very big dog!

     

 In the wonderful world of kindergarten, once discovery starts... and we wonder together... the world grows bigger and bigger and... we discover more evidence of one kind or another.

And we make our own tracks.