1. S:UWPublic4H-Youth DevelopmentCamp TaPaWingoLesson PlansTHE SNOW QUEEN’S ENCHANTED GARDEN.doc
THE SNOW QUEEN’S ENCHANTED GARDEN
Activity Plan
Project Skills:
Youth investigate flowers and
other natural things of beauty in
the winter.
Life Skills:
Learning to Learn
Academic Standard:
Environmental Education
A.8.2 Collect information from a
variety of resources, conduct
experiments, and develop possible
solutions to their investigations.
Grade Levels:
Grades 2-8
Time:
90 minutes
Supplies Needed:
Hot packs
Magnifying glasses
Thermometers
Clipboards
Twig Finder sheets
Winter plant sheets
Do Ahead:
Sharpen pencils and attach to
clipboards.
Make copies of sheets for
activities.
Day before and/or day of event
Walk intended route. Make sure
that route is safe. Make sure route
is clear of snags, fallen trees,
muddy or slippery spots. Make
sure key spots are not buried in
the snow, browsed by wildlife,
melted or trampled. Also look for
last minute inspirations. Perhaps a
cottonwood has ice melting on the
bark. Perhaps you have found a
patch of woolly alder aphids.
Just before hike
Make sure youth have enough
layers and are properly attired.
Check weather and temperature
to make sure it is doable.
Have hot packs available for youth
who get cold early
BACKGROUND
Youth will go on an enchanted winter walk of Camp TaPaWingo’s, looking for the Snow
Queen’s secret garden. To the untrained eye, the garden is an invisible, frozen
landscape, devoid of life. To the learned who is willing to open all of their senses, the
landscape shows you where summer flowers will bloom, holds the scents and tastes of
summer, secrets insects and spiders and turns water into frozen flowers as well as
other marvelous mysteries.
WHAT TO DO
Activity 1 : Set the story of the Snow Queens Garden
Today we are going to go on a hike through the Snow Queen’s Garden. The Snow
Queen likes to hide her flowers well. Her flowers are not reds and pinks and yellows,
but whites and grays and browns. Her songs are not the loud boisterous calls of the
cardinal, the wren and the robin, her garden songs are quiet, subtle and calm. To find
her garden you must adjust your eyes, your ears, warm the tip of your nose, and
even warm your heart and you will find her garden enchanting.
Before we go, what are some things we need to remember?
Keep in mind how cold you are – We want you to stay warm. Dressing warm and
keeping moving is part of that circulation. If you are getting too cold and your teeth
begin to chatter, let an adult know. If you need to move, try bouncing up and down
on the balls of your feet. Monitor yourself.
Stick with the group – Make sure we leave no one behind. The Snow Queen wants no
dilly-dalliers or lost foundlings.
Walk in a line – Walking two by two causes tripping and forces people off the trail
and holds up the tour. Walk single file. Pay attention to pace of the group and you
will be able to explore with your ears and eyes around you. Keep about an arm
length between you and the person in front of you. This isn’t a race. Be respectful
and hold your head high in her eminence’s court.
When we come to a stop make room for the approaching group – Notice where you
fall in with the group and what we are observing. If you are first in line don’t just
stop, keep moving forward and find a space. Spread out around the speaker, tall
people in the back, small people in the front. Her grace demands this.
Quiet voices – See how much you can walk in quiet. Perhaps you notice how much
noise your coat makes. Perhaps you notice the sound of your footsteps. Perhaps you
notice the sound of your own breathing. It will please her grace.
Activity 2: Rising up to the tall cathedrals to listen to the wind
Just before rising to the top of the hill.
2. S:UWPublic4H-Youth DevelopmentCamp TaPaWingoLesson PlansTHE SNOW QUEEN’S ENCHANTED GARDEN.doc
Sources:
Winter Twig Finder by Watts and
Watts
Created by
Matt Welter
4-H Youth Development Educator,
Manitowoc County
Adapted for:
We need to begin our journey by rising to the top of the Snow Queen’s Kingdom. It is
from here she can observe all of the parts of her garden. It is good for a leader to
take in and observe the whole of their kingdom from time to time.
It is from this vantage point that we will see and hear some of her heartiest plants –
the trees. So hearty are these trees that they we born before your great grandfather
and will outlive your great grandchildren.
Walk until arriving at the top of the hill where the latchpot is.
Listen with your ears and follow with your eyes. The leaves you find here are ones
that stay on throughout all of winter. Her majesty, the Snow Queen, welcomes you
on your journey and invites you to find three trees that hold on to their leaves in
winter. One is tall and has leaves we mistake for something else. One is medium and
has leaves that will not leave until it is spring and one is small and thin and has leaves
that are sometimes mistaken for patches of sunlight. Can you guess them?
White and Red Pine – Tall pines with needles. Needles are leaves, but we call them
needles. They stay on the tree all winter longer and provide chlorophyll.
Red Oak – The leaves are gray but are the last leaves to go off any tree in the winter.
Beech – Pale gold leaves. Stay almost as long as oak. Many times they seem like small
trees but some of the the larger trees here with very smooth bark are also beech.
Listen and see if you can here each of the three trees in the wind.
There are two more treasures here to find. I tree that makes its own paper, though
too curled and fine to write on with twigs that taste like wintergreen. Another is a
tree that is not a tree. It grows under the snow. It has the Snow Queen’s affection it
because its nickname is Princess Pine. Can you find them?
Yellow Birch – Like white birch only with yellowy paper, this tree grows wider and can
live up to 250 years. At its full growth it can be so big around, five of you cannot wrap
your arms about it. Its sap can be boiled into wintergreen syrup and its twigs can be
made into tea.
Club moss – Sometimes called Princess Pine or Ground Cedar, this plant is more
closely related to mosses than pines. Can you find some moss nearby? Believe it or
not in the times of dinosaurs these were the trees and they were as tall as dinosaurs.
When we burn coal, this is what we are mostly burning, club mosses from the times
of dinosaurs.
Activity 3: Finding winter flowers that carry the seeds an scents of summer (field)
Take group to old field along edge and hand out winter plant cards.
The Snow Queen has allowed you to stroll through her garden. However, she feels
that in order to be proper royalty you must take some initiative and learn some
things on your own. She is not just going to take you by the hand and show you the
plants of her garden. She has given you these cards with sketches of some of her
common plants.
You can work alone or with a partner. You must find a plant, tape a piece to the
sheet, smell it, collect its seed, and find out one more thing about it.
If you finish early, you can sketch a patch of the garden or find a mystery plant of
your own that you can name yourself.
3. S:UWPublic4H-Youth DevelopmentCamp TaPaWingoLesson PlansTHE SNOW QUEEN’S ENCHANTED GARDEN.doc
If you choose not to participate in this activity, The Snow Queen will reward you with
blue lips and icy fingers.
Activity: Buds are the flowers of trees (arboretum)
The Snow Queen will now allow you to stroll amongst her prized Arboretum. Here
she keeps her most precious tree buds. These buds will stay closed until the very last
chill of winter when they will open and show their pussy willows and tiny flowers.
The Snow Queen only allows this to happen before any terrestrial flower shows its
head.
Again, if you are to be part of her royal entourage, you must show merit. We have a
twig finder that shows each of the different twigs. You must find a sample of the twig
on the ground around the tree it represents and tape it to the sheet. You must smell
it to find out if it has a fragrance. In some cases you may even want to taste it. There
are actually several twigs here that the Snow Queen personally serves her guests for
tea.
If you complete this activity you may look for tracks of some of the wild animals the
Snow Queen allows to live here.
If you choose not to participate, know that the next time you catch a chill it is
probably the Snow Queen reminding you how you are wasting the precious and
beautiful moments of winter.
Hand out twig finder sheets.
Activity: Snowflakes, ice patterns and music (river)
Look and listen. Look and Listen. Look and Listen. We have come to a sacred spot in
the Snow Queen’s Garden. All around you are flowers she has crafted with her own
hands, some out of her own breath – the breath of winter. At times the Snow Queen
waits for the moisture to come off of the river and blows across it forming
snowflakes right off the river itself.
Some of the snow she makes actually makes sound. I have here a thermometer. I am
disappointed that this is not a royal thermometer, however, it will do. If this
thermometer reaches less than ten degrees the snow will begin to crunch when you
walk through it. If it reaches below zero, it will actually squeak.
I also have some magnifying glasses. I want you to find a tree and see if you can find
a single snowflake on its bark. Dark bark works the best. See the intricate detail the
Snow Queen weaves into each snow flake. Each one is like a diamond that can melt
under the heat of your breath. Each one is like many complex mirrors sparkling in the
sun.
Look to the ice on the river. Tread carefully and slowly. Can anyone find air bubbles
frozen under the ice of the river? Can anyone find air bubbles moving under the skim
of the ice? Look along the banks. Can you find icicles the Snow Queen has formed?
Splash forms? Ice moguls where the river was once high, has fallen and now ice
daggers remain shattered below.
Find a place to sit and listen, listen, listen. We are going to give five minutes of
silence to the Snow Queen for the beauty she has provided in this musical part of her
garden. Listen of a bird. Listen for the trees bending, creaking, popping in the wind.
4. S:UWPublic4H-Youth DevelopmentCamp TaPaWingoLesson PlansTHE SNOW QUEEN’S ENCHANTED GARDEN.doc
Listen for the water and ice moving in the river. And listen for the Snow Queen’s
rarest sound of all. Listen for the silence.
Activity: Where life hides (hemlock forest)
Here in the hemlock forest is life sleeping. The Snow Queen hides some of this life in
the snow and some of it in what appears to be the shadow of the snow.
Who can spot a form life? How many forms of life can we see? Raise your hand if
you spot something. Take answers.
Trees – Look around a tree. Can you see that there is a ring around each tree where
there is less snow. If you find a dead tree this is not the same. A live tree absorbs
heat from the sun during the day and slowly releases the heat during the night,
forming a melted ring of snow around the tree as winter progresses.
Evergreens – Hemlock, yew, balsam, cedar. All keep their needles during winter. Find
some needles on the ground and compare their colors to the live needles. If the
needles on the trees were the color of most of the needles on the ground, the tree
would be dead. Smell the needles. Again, the Snow Queen keeps her scents close.
Has anyone seen any wintergreen?
Bugs on the Snow – Snowfleas, craneflies, fungus gnats, fuzzy alder aphids and
spiders all come out during winter. Snowfleas look like pepper on the snow. When
you get close to them they actually hop and make noise. Fuzzy alder aphids look like
bits of snow stuck to an alder tree. They excrete fuzzy silk out of their back. If you
blow on them they walk around.
Spiderwebs - If you are very observant you can find the Snow Queen’s tinsel. Spiders
come out in in winter and let loose their silken lines, usually on a warm day. If you
look towards the branches with the sun to your back you might see this tinsel, spider
silk coated with a few errant snowflakes.
Fungus – Some fungus grows all winter. Some mushrooms come out only during
early and late winter. Turkey tails, bread dough, horse’s hooves, splitgills, artist
conks, and mazegills stay all winter. In the Snow Queen’s hemlock grove, one of her
most special fungus is the red hemlock conk. Who can find one. It is deep red and the
size of my palm and very hard. Bring it to me. If I snap it open the frass, the beetle
dung from a mother horned fungus beetle will drop out. By May her eggs in this conk
will hatch and the larvae will be walking around. By June this beetle will be living on
this conk and in summer if a person or a predator walks by it wil fold up its legs and
play dead.
Activity: How long has this been the Snow Queens Garden
Meet back by the lodge, the river looking at the silt island in the river.
Look back into the river and see if you can find the island. I want you to find the long
bar island because it represents the story of the how the Snow Queen started her
garden.
With any garden you start you must first work the soil. The soil that was work here
was not worked with a shovel, the Snow Queen worked it with the tools she knew
best.. Ice, Snow, and Water.
Over 10,000 years ago there was a glacier rest very close here. It was much like a
snowbank you might have piled up on your sidewalk or at the edge of your driveway.
It had in it, ice, silt, dirt, rocks, debris. Only the Snow Queen hadn’t piled it up a foot
5. S:UWPublic4H-Youth DevelopmentCamp TaPaWingoLesson PlansTHE SNOW QUEEN’S ENCHANTED GARDEN.doc
and a half high, she had piled it up a mile high. A pebbles were also rocks and
boulders.
Just like your snowbank that melted in your driveway, water flowed out of it and
formed a stream that would change course each time a boulder came loose in the
glacier or a large chunk of ice broke off. If you do this to small streams, the streams
split and braid. They leave behind sand and silt in places where the stream is slower.
If you look at the island in the river that is what has happened. Silt and sand have
piled up behind a smaller bar of sand and slowly the island has grown larger. But
remember when the Snow Queen started her garden her river wasn’t a small one like
this one, it can from a glacier a mile high. So its sand bar was a lot larger. Can anyone
guess where that sandbar is?
We walked on it – The hill leading up to the pine forest and the meadow on top of it.
That was the sandbar that was sculpted by the glacier, the giant block of ice.
Where the glacier stood for the longest time a river ran in front of it. We followed
along that rivers track. The gouge that river left is still here. It is at the lowest part of
the property. Where is that?
The river itself today. Yes, it isn’t as fast or as large as it once might have been but it
is still here.
As the glacier melted it dropped larger blocks of ice that left pits of the ground,
making the ground uneven and dropping all of the small sand and gravel trapped
behind it – on the other side of the river.
In a way, the Snow Queen had planned out different types of gardens in one small
space for everyone to enjoy. Perhaps you can come back in summer and see it when
it is blooming and remember what it is also like when it is the Snow Queen’s Garden.
TALK IT OVER
Reflect:
What did you not realize was here that you now know is?
What things do you think you could only see in winter or hear in winter?
How did being quiet enhance the experience?
How does thinking about this being “the Snow Queen’s Garden” make you
think about this place differently.
Application:
If you were to come back in summer, what would you most look forward to
seeing that you saw today?
If you were to go a natural area near your home in the winter, how could you
explore it like we did today? What could you use to find out?
Do you think the sounds we heard today will sound the same today as other
parts of winter? (think of different kinds of winter weather)
Have you ever looked up the geology of your own property, school or a local
park? Maybe your favorite state or county park?
ENHANCE/SIMPLIFY
Enhance for Older Youth:
