FOCUS: Under a canopy of trees, the forest floor is a cool, damp, and protected environment. Here in the leaf litter millions of small organisms – fungi and bacteria, springtails and mites, spiders and centipedes and others – are all part of a rich food web. Many of these are decomposers, feeding on plant and animal remains and turning them back into soil.
INTRODUCTION
Objective: To begin to explore and ask questions about leaf litter.
Pour a garbage bag of full of freshly fallen leaves onto a sheet. Point out that these are just some of the leaves that fall from a single tree, each year. Ask children, “With so many leaves falling in a forest every year, why aren’t they piled up high in the forest?”
Materials: a garbage bag full of freshly fallen leaves, old sheet.
EFT’S EYE VIEW
Objective: To experience the world as it might seem to a small creature living on the forest floor.
Be sure to check for poison ivy first. Have children lie on the forest, facing upwards. What do they notice about their surroundings, such as the amount of light on the forest floor (shady), amount of wind (little), noise (quiet), moisture (damp), fragrance (musty, moldy, like damp earth). Have children roll over onto their stomachs and find a place to dig a little nose hole in the leaf litter; Continue reading Leaf Litter – Activities
Nearby Nature 