March Moss Studies

I have a confession to make. A secret really. A passion since I’ve been young. 

I like to pet moss. Hovering my hand over the forest’s silky carpet. I love it when the little antennas poke out to tickle my fingers. Softly, over the surface, with a smile and my eyes closed.

I feel much better now. Telling you my weird forest habits. This month Moss is our Nature Focus.  We followed along with the projects on The OHC #42 Moss and Lichen last Friday. On that Outdoor Challenge there is a ling to “The Life Cycle of Moss”. Which I thought was weird.  One doesn’t see the “life cycle of carrots” on websites. We clicked over out of curiosity. WOW! We had no idea how these little guys grow. I found out that my antennas that I love so much are the seed holders of sorts for the moss! We had to rush out to the forest to find some.

Oops. We got distracted with all of the mushrooms, moss and lichen in the forest next to our property.  We brought our seed pods back in the house and looked at them under a hand held magnifying lens.  I have the microscope out for today’s studies, I’d like to look closer.

We’ve been looking for forms of fungi everywhere we go – found quite a few conks at the beach the other day –

I’ll try to get photos of our notebooking pages with the lifecyle. We wrote down the key vocabulary words of the parts of the moss and it’s reproductive system/cycle. We’ll use the notebook page from today’s Outdoor Hour Challenge to draw it out and describe the piece in more descriptive detail.

Perfect fun indoor activity on a rainy, misty, foggy coastal afternoon!