A Two Poster

Today is a two-post day... here is the first.

This morning my students were able to follow up our trapping lesson of yesterday with a trap checking lesson. Right after morning announcements and our spelling test we pulled on all our winter gear - very necessary today, as the temps dipped to -20 last night - and headed out onto the lake.

Our trapping guide joined us and we gathered around the first of the traps we set yesterday. He pointed out bubbles that we could see under the ice. This meant that the beaver had been around and may have sprung the trap with a stick. We were quite excited. But our guide was very calm and made sure that we knew that beavers are very smart and are quite able to spring traps without being caught. It was very likely that we only had a stick in the trap.

With our hopes low, we watched as he carefully chiseled away the ice that froze over the hole during the night (almost three inches thick in one night, brrr!) and scooped the loose ice out of the water. Then he pulled the trap out of the water and we saw...

A great big beaver! It was huge. All the students' jaws dropped. My jaw dropped. We were so tickled that we were almost dancing on the ice. Our patient trapping guide smiled at our antics. Then he showed us how to open the trap and remove the beaver, drag it across the snow on the ice to dry the water off the fur, and pull it back to the house.

That was when I realized that I really should have brought my camera, because this was a fabulous Canadian class book right here! Aaargh, I missed it. But we didn't miss the learning experience. And we still have some great connections between our experiences and the habitats unit we just finished in science and the research we are learning to do on the Internet. Educational karma, yummy!

And, as a double bonus, our wonderful guide is waiting until Monday to skin the beaver so we can go watch. We are also going to try to cook some of the meat and taste it. What an adventurous group of students I have!

My homework for the weekend is to find a recipe for beaver. Hmmm, I think that I have a Northern cookbook somewhere from my parents. I bet there is a recipe in there...