Don, 2nd graders, and my birthday

I can do this stuff with my eyes closed. Okay, I may have had it a bit easy today. Nine second grade girls and two chaperons. Believe me, they loved the fact that I was the only boy in the whole group and were quick to point it out! I also taught alone today.

Of course like every group I have had so far, they started out quiet. A good icebreaker was doing nature names. I was able to pick out the naturally quiet ones with this. We started on the trail head and the group was very good at this point about staying on task. As we went on, two of the girls kept leaving the group, going way too far ahead, and missing a lot of things towards the end. I really had to restrain them to staying behind me, which I don't like to do. The vernal pond had a lot of neat critters in it today. Much more salamander larva than usual. With about 30 minutes to go the girls saw a garner snake and I wasn't able to catch it. 15 minutes later we saw a 6 ft black rat snake! They loved it. We brought it in for the snake show to compare how big they will get. I also did the snake show today. I'm still shaky on the facts though. I convinced Abby to hold Don today. Now she loves holding him!

Today was my birthday. Liz made me cheesecake (boo ya!).