The trip to Highland Forest last week was a success! Although it was a little bit cold, the students did an amazing job exploring the pond! On our walk there we stopped to see the workers moving TONS of rocks into the trucks! It was fascinating to see! On the way we stopped and played camouflage too! The students were so great at hiding! We also stopped and listened to a woodpecker and tried to follow its sounds!

After the lonnnggggggg walk to the pond we discovered that most of the pond was gone! The students quickly caught on that because of the lack of rainfall the pond dried up, but we found our way through the woods, with some stopping to make music on the bare branches of the trees with sticks. Since we still had a little bit of the pond left to explore, we made the most of it! We found as much as we could in the small pond! We found whirligig, snails, a boatman, algae and leeches! It was a little chilly outside but that did not stop us from getting in the pond and learning! Some other students exploring around the pond, chasing wood peckers, finding raccoon tracks and other plant life. We found a bunch of different animal tracks and different types of interesting mushrooms. We ate lunch at the pond, talked about what we found and then took our long short cut back to camp. On our way back we stopped and looked at plant life and other fun and exciting things. Hilary McManus came and took a few samples from the pond and the algae found on the walk back to camp and explained to us many things about the pond and the plant life! We looked at these samples this week – stay tuned for that blog post!

Once we got back to camp it was a fun and jam packed few days at Highland Forest! I am so glad that I was able to be a part of such a wonderful trip with the students!

-Amanda