The Prairie field study

 We started the Prairie field study by playing a game in the field by the lodge.

 Can you tell that we're a bit...excited?

Ranger John pulled everyone together to give our next instructions...

 

Off we went down a trail leading to the prairie...

 We stopped along the way...learned about the elk and how they scrape the bark of the trees with their antlers...

 Ranger John had some velvet from their antlers to show us...

 

He also showed us some antlers...

 We learned some of the trees in this forest... the Douglas Fir...

 The Redwood...

 The Hemlock...

 

and the Sitka Spruce...

 In each of the field studies, we would stop and record information in our journals...

"We LOVE our journals!"

 We learned about the energy flow through from the sun through through the forest....

 We played another game where Ranger John put a picture of an animal around our neck with the picture on our back.  We had to ask questions to a partner to guess what it was..

 "Am I an herbivore?"

 We finally made it to the prairie..but unfortunately, there were no elk there. 

 We sat down on our sit-up-ons...

 and listened to Ranger John talk about how to tell whether an animal was a carnivore, herbivore, or omnivore by looking at the eye sockets and teeth of a skull...

 

(I just thought I'd throw this picture in.  A lot of us were wearing boots since there had been a lot of rain...and it was m-u-d-d-y!)

 We looked at different skulls...first determining if it was a carnivore, herbivore, or omnivore...

 then trying to decide exactly what animal it was...

 The clouds were gathering above the meadow...

 Our next activity was a game to see how important the balance of the prairie is...

 

After awhile, it was time to head back to the lodge...

 We followed the trail 'Back to Lodge'...

 passing some beautiful fungi along the way...

 We learned a lot on the prairie field study!  Thank you, Ranger John!