Exploring Nature is the best program ever

I love exploring nature.  It is just such an awesome program where the hike time really feels like an opportunity for inquiry.  I wish that more schools would request this program.  It is so valuable to have unstructured hike time.  Yesterdays group was so unbelievably engaged.  I don't think I have ever heard called my name so many times in an hour, as that group of students all dying to show me what they had discovered.   If we had been out there to look for something in particular, I might not have been able to give each of their discoveries all of the attention that it deserved.  It just felt so good really let them lead the hike.

In the afternoon yesterday I led a flower hike.  Though the time did not have quite the inquiry, student led feeling it was still really fun.  I second Tom's comment that those were really awesome 5th graders.  There was almost nothing blooming which was kind a bummer.  Still the students worked had to collect some flower specimens (from our decorative rose bush) for dissection.  It was cool to split them open and identify the male and female reproductive parts.  I was a little bit surprised that none of them knew what function a flower serves.  They could tell me that roots take up water and nutrients from the soil, and even that the leaves make sugar through photosynthesis, but not that flowers are reproductive parts.  That feels like a really basic piece of information so I really liked being able to focus on them understanding that.  Those basic things are the things that feel like epiphanys or "AHOHhhhhh..." moments for me, and it was  great to hear that coming from the students.