Before going into the forest today, we told the children that we’d have a slightly different schedule. They had expressed an interest in birds, so after about 15 minutes of free play, we brought them together for an opportuni-TEA party---an invitation (Reggio Emilia educational term) offered with a warm cup of tea. We talked about about what they know about birds, then read some things they didn’t know, specifically about nests and eggs. The “challenge by choice” was to use their new knowledge about eggs to make some of their own with materials in the forest and house them safely in a nest. Everyone chose to try it out and their ideas about what eggs should look like, how they should function, and how to insulate them in a nest for incubation. There were many dragon eggs with amazing powers of protection! At snack, we read about Great Grey Owls, Bald Eagles, and city birds that adapt to human activity. After snack, they were excited to get back to their eggs! The work with mud also spurred some mudball play and mudslide surfing on our rainy day together. At the end of our forest time two children decided to take their eggs out of the forest and the others chose to leave them in the nests they had built. This led to some interesting speculation about what the state of the eggs would be on Thursday when we checked on them! Sarah and Nicollette were proud of the children on our rainiest day yet!