These Frisky Brisky Hippity Hop-ping critters are fun to watch, so look out your window and record what you see. Between December 16, 2013 and January 5, 2014, investigate squirrels in your neighborhood as part of the Winter Learning Challenge.
Discover
- Observe the squirrels in your yard or neighborhood park. Are they grey squirrels or fox squirrels? How many squirrels do you count? What kind of trees do you see? Are there any predators? Become a citizen scientist by submitting your data to Project Squirrel, a partnership between Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum and the University of Illinois at Chicago.
- Did you know that there are approximately 270 different kinds of squirrels in the world and that squirrels live on every continent except Antarctica?
- How do squirrels survive in the Arctic?
- Squirrels are scatterhoarders. This means they hide small amounts of food in a variety of locations and then to survive the winter they have to remember where they put the food. Test your memory to see if you would survive winter as a squirrel.
- How do squirrels remember where they hid their acorns?
- Do flying squirrels really fly?
Create
- Write a squirrel acrostic poem.
- What if you were a squirrel? Write a story from a squirrel’s point of view. Need some inspiration? Try these story starters:
- When I jump from branch to branch, I feel…
- From my nest in a tree, I can see…
- I went out in the snow to go dig up an acorn and…
- With my ears perked up, I can hear…
- Make your own squirrel guessing game with an egg carton and an acorn.
- Learn to draw a squirrel. Create a winter scene with your squirrel.
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