There is something oddly rewarding about hearing preschoolers shout, "Ungulate!"
No, I did not teach them something naughty. An ungulate is any hoofed animal. And, it being the time of year that many children think about Santa and reindeer, I thought that the preschoolers who attend the monthly program I teach at a Northern Utah national wildlife refuge might enjoy learning about three of the ungulates that are native to the area in which they live.
The kids had no trouble grasping the concept. Adults, however, needed to work on it a bit.
"She's teaching preschoolers about ungulates?" a wildlife biologist asked my supervisor as the pair cruised through our classroom en route to a meeting.
Yep. Specifically, we were learning about where moose, elk and mule deer are most likely to live, based on what they like to eat, how their bodies are designed and whether or not they travel in large herds.
Truly, it is not all that complicated. I showed them a three-panel board with a high altitude wetland marsh, a high desert plain with lots of tall grass and open space and a lower elevation desert.
Tell a 4-year-old that a moose eats mostly plants that grow in and around the water, and the child will figure out that the moose picture goes with the wetland marsh -- ditto for the elk that eats lots of grass and needs room to travel in massive herds, and the mule deer that has large ears to help it stay cool when it is really hot.
We examined skulls of all three, noting that they are different sizes but all have the same kind of plant-eating teeth. Mule deer live on the refuge so we made mule deer masks, with each child deciding whether to be a buck (with antlers) or a doe (without antlers).
Then we headed outside to look at the coarse, scrubby vegetation that deer must to eat -- which is why they have four stomachs (ruminants) to help them digest such rough food. We found mule deer tracks in the mud, which showed how a deer makes its legs longer by walking on its tippy-toes.
Truly, most of these 3- to 5-year-olds will remember at least part of what we learned. In fact, I am always amazed at how much they can recall. As we lined up at the door to go outside that day, one of the 4-year-olds pressed his nose against the window and said, "Just look at all of the owl pellets!"
Sure enough, there were seven of them lying in various spots around the veranda that leads to our trail.
I didn't count them. The children did. And who am I to argue with budding scientists -- even if some of them still believe that ungulates take to the sky each Christmas Eve?
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