We had a great naturalist class today.  Nate got us through half of the chapter on animals, our student Joan Sullivan talked briefly about the trip to Africa (!) from which she’d just returned, and Nate shared some new Black Bear photos from the Silver Spur Ranch.

And we tested the students’ deductive abilities with our “Coyote CSI” activity.  We do this for each class and the students seem to really enjoy it.  We present them with the skeleton of a young coyote and ask them to try to figure out how it died.  Lots of good guesses from this group including: it died of a rattlesnake bite; it died from being poisoned by bad water; it died of a neurological disorder… (It actually died of starvation, but the guesses were excellent.)  We also had samples of deer and elk antlers and showed them the differences between them and how they grow. 

CLICK HERE for the album of photos.