Out the Classroom Window

A little teaser for a cold winter day...

The cold continues to grip Minnesota with an added promise of a bit of snow tomorrow BUT spring is on the way.

I love the teaching space I work in. I can look out the windows and see lots of things going on that the kids miss most of the time. Sometimes though what I see is neat enough that I'll interrupt class (usually it's my teaching partner that gets interrupted) to point something out to the class. Last Tuesday I looked out the back windows and watched several crows chasing an adult bald eagle right behind school. The whole class got to see that. On Thursday it was a different story. My teaching partner gave me a little nod to look out the back window and there, sitting in a poplar, was a pretty nice looking red-tailed hawk. I moved over to the window to get a look without disturbing the class when out of nowhere came a Northern Shrike. It flew in and sat above the hawk for a second and then went into a full out dive toward the hawk. The red-tail jumped from it's perch and the last I saw either of them they were headed east. All of this took no more than 30 seconds and not another person n class saw it but boy what a cool thing to see at work.

As the days lengthen and the temperatures rise I'm sure there'll be more interruptions to the lesson being taught so the kids can learn a bit from the natural world.