Play Wildlife Detective with Your Kids

Video Transcript

"Another way to get the kids involved outside and connected with nature is to look at different types of animal tracks that are in your yard. You find a bird feeder, a lot of times that's a place where you see all kinds of tracks; rabbit tracks. We happen to have deer, coyotes, rabbits, those kinds of animals and so we'll actually walk through the yard and try to figure out what the different tracks are and just talk a little bit about the animals that might of made them. And we can do a game called Wildlife Detective, where we're trying to figure out what the tracks are and who made the tracks. Look over there, Bailey, over there. What do you think these are? Oh, I know! It goes over to the neighbors yard, these look like, what do these look like right here? Deer. Yeah, I think those are deer. What do you think these are going over there? Here some more. These look like hoof prints, don't they? See, see how they got like a curve? See that, right there, that might be, what do you think? Maybe a rabbit. That looks a little different than the other one. Here they go over here. Could this be a deer underneath that low branch? No. What do you think, if it had a foot under that low branch, what might it be? I think I know what those are. What? Their little mouses. Oh, maybe because the deer couldn't fit underneath that branch, huh? So maybe it was a mouse, or a rabbit? Yeah it could be. It goes all the way down there. Okay, well, look at all these other tracks down here. There's all kinds. Why do you think they're walking this way? Any ideas, are you trying to follow the tracks? You might be walking for a very long time. So as you can see this is a way to get the kids involved outside and talking about nature and different animals. "