It was a beautiful morning for our Tales and Trails program today!

Families arrived, and were invited to make a piece of pie or pizza using the materials on the carpet. 

Why are we making pie and pizza??? What does that have to do with nature?

We gathered around to read The Tea Party in the Woods by Akiko Miyakoshi, a beautifully illustrated book. Here's a spread from partway through the book, where animals give a child a beautiful tray of their handmade pies, made with ingredients from the woods. 

See the pies that we made? Yum.

​​After the story, we hit the trails - to gather supplies for our tea party in the woods! Baskets were filled with miniature pinecones, sticks, grasses, and snow. 

Let the tea party begin!

We had a great time on Saturday searching for things around the woods and ponds of Huron Natural Area! More than 70 people participated, cameras in hand, to capture photos of various winter items and activities. 

Such as: SNOWPERSON BUILDING!

Each group was asked to make, and photograph, a snowperson. It was a bit tricky as the snow wasn't packing snow that day. But they did it!

 Some other tasks were:

* lie in the woods for one whole minute -- what do you notice?
* play at the new Huron Play Area - just finished in December!
* make a snow angel

It was amazing to hear what people saw when they were looking for items on their lists: mink tracks, rabbit tracks, raccoon tracks, a live little mole running through the forest, crows and geese flying overhead, and a raccoon way up in a tree! Incredible what you can find when you take the time to look.

Guess what one of the hardest things on the list was.... a bird! Perhaps our big crew was too noisy. :)

One sneaky thing that everyone had to find were these little upside-down snowmen. There were 10 of them hiding in the woods of Huron.

Thanks to everyone who came out! It was a great time together in nature, breathing in the fresh air, and training our eyes to look for winter clues.