Fun and Squirrels
The squirrel family scientific name is Sciuridae. The squirrels of North America can be divided into two main groups. Ground squirrels and tree squirrels. The ground squirrels include Chipmunks, Marmots, Antelope squirrels, Ground Squirrels, and Prairie Dogs. Tree squirrels, include red, gray, and flying squirrels.
Squirrels in general are thinking four major thoughts. Where is danger? Where is food? Do I eat now or store this food? Where can I store food?
The size and type of the food makes the decision between, eat now or store easy. Like all animals the squirrel knows wither the food it found would provide the animal with the energy it would use to find a place to store that food. It also knows which food items would rot if stored. Very small seeds such as the seeds you find on a strawberry, and the berry itself, are eaten on the spot while the squirrel looks for danger and something that stores better. Seeds as small as a strawberries are not worth storing and the berry would rot. Large seeds such as a kernel of corn or nut would be stored.
Have each student draws a picture of a squirrel on an unlined index card. Squirrel cards are placed face down.
Take a playing card deck and shuffle them place them face down on the table between players. Black cards spades and clubs, represent seeds that are too small to store and are eaten on the spot. Red cards, hearts and diamonds, represent seeds and nuts that are good for storing. Kings, queens, jacks represent predators or animals that want to eat the squirrel.
Set aside jokers and aces.
Students draw one card each turn. When they draw a red food card, something to store, a student can turn their squirrel cards face up and on the next turn start collecting nuts or seeds, red cards, to store if and when they are drawn. Food that is two small or must be eaten, not stored, the black cards, are put into a discard stack.
When anyone draws a face or ace card they can give that card to another player. That squirrel did not see the predator and was eaten. The eaten squirrel must return all its stored nuts to the discard pile, turn his or her squirrel face down, and start all over collecting nuts, after a red card is drawn.
When there are no more cards to draw, the discard pile is shuffled, restacked and the game continues until this stack is also used, then the game ends. Or you can shuffle and keep playing until all the squirrels have decided it is too dangerous in that part of the woods, and are keeping their squirrel cards face down. Any squirrel can skip or not draw a card during their turn and place their squirrel face down, hiding from a possible predator that might be drawn, until it is their turn again. To return to play the squirrel must again first draw a red card. The squirrel with the most stored nuts, red cards, wins.
Tree squirrels use are two strategies for hiding food. One is to all the nuts in a few places, or piles called middens, cover them and then guard these middens from other animals that will want to steal them or eat them. The other way is to hide nuts or seeds one at a time. Then only one or two nuts might be lost if dug up by another animal. Middens need to be protected but if each nut is buried by itself in a large area, like in the shade of a different type tree, one nut might be found but not all of them. The squirrel needs only remember which tree it buried its nuts by.
Have each student color 10 pieces of paper in an individual pattern, then hide in the room. These "nuts" the students will need to find at the end of the lesson.
To the card game above add in the jokers and aces. Play the game again but this time when a joker or ace is drawn that squirrel has drew the joker or ace, just found the midden of another squirrel. The student that draws a joker or ace can give that card to any player and then take all that players nuts. At the end of the game the squirrel with the most stored nuts wins. the squirrels still need to watch out for predators so the other face cards are still part of the game.
Most ground squirrels build a multi chambered home in the ground. Most have a sleeping room, a food storage room and at least a second entrance or escape doorway.
Usually the squirrel's home are for that squirrel alone or a mother with babies, though Marmots, Ground Squirrels, and Prairie Dogs will dig homes near each other. Tree squirrels will sometimes come together in the same nest during the worst of the cold winter days. Of the members of the squirrel family that live close together all year, the Prairie dogs are the most famous. Prairie dog towns can have as many as a 1000 animals in it. Members of several generations of a prairie dog family will build near each other. There can be several of these extended families in a single town. Prairie dogs will eat and harvest seeds and plants from an area about 30 feet around their homes. Because some plants grow each year from seeds, and others grow bushier with trimming, ground squirrels can control their food source. Those plants that grow from seed each year, may not grow because the ground squirrels eat the seeds and or prevent the plant from growing long enough to produce seeds. These plants die out in the area around a ground squirrel town. Other plants are able to grow because they now get the sun they needs. The plants that are controlled in this way by ground squirrels often attract cows, bison and other similar grass eating animals that want a change of menu.
Because some animals eat the seeds of plants, some plants produce seeds that can be partly eaten and still sprout then grow. It has been found that acorns, the seeds of oak trees can grow into a plant even when a squirrel has eaten a small but choice part of the seed. The part of the acorn the squirrels seem to really eat is small and at the base of the nut. The important part of the seed that the plant grows from is at the other end of the acorn. It is thought that the oak seeds have changed to survive a nibble from a squirrel.
In a way many animals may help or force a plant to change.
Have students pair up. One is the squirrel one is the plant. Both will need scissors. Give the plant a 8 inch square of newspaper or other scrap paper. The plant cuts a shape, its seed, from the paper and hands the paper seed to the squirrel. The squirrel cuts off half the seed to eat and returns the piece of paper to the plant. The plant re-cuts the paper to make the same shape again but smaller from the left over piece of paper, and hands the changed paper seed to the squirrel which again cuts half to eat. The paper is handed back and forth until the squirrel decides the seed is not worth the energy to eat and leaves it alone.
In this case the squirrel has caused the plant to produce very small seeds. Some very big trees come from some very tinny seeds.
Tree squirrels are always looking for some place to store their nuts. Any opening in tree or ground is looked into. In this way the tree squirrel finds places that might do for raising a family, store nuts, flee to in case of danger, and use as a home or drey for winter. Not only do squirrels use holes in trees as dreys, they also build winter dreys from sticks and leaves.
When people build a home they put walls and a roof together to make one or many rooms. We build around a open space. I believe but have never seen a squirrel do this, that squirrel has no idea of how to build a house like we do, the squirrel just starts to put sticks in a pile, which will become a ball of sticks and leaves. The squirrel then chews a space out of the center, fills this space with softer material and burrows into the middle to sleep through the coldest of winters long days.
Cut a piece of brown construction paper into strips. The thinner the strips the more time and work the squirrel will have to do to make its home. For younger children strips about ½ inch wide by 6 inches long would work nice. Have students start gluing the strips together to make a ball shape as wide as the strips are long. Once a circle of construction paper strips has been glued together use a hole punch to make a starter hole for scissors and cut a half to inch wide hole. Put a layer of glue on one side of the drey, from around the edge of the drey's door, to half way to the edge of the drey, and stick on some sort of fluff. I used scrap quilt batting. Once the glue is dry draw a face on an index finger and the squirrel can poke its head through the hole to check if the weather is warm enough to go to one of its store rooms and have a bit to eat or go back to sleep. One side of the model shows the drey from the outside and one side the inside.
Hmmmm now just were did your store those ten nuts? It is time to find the nuts you hid around the room. Squirrels need to find as many of their own nuts as possible but if they find someone else's, well yum yum. When you think you have found all the nuts hidden, who has the most? Who found the most of his or her own nuts? 10 nuts might be easy but what if you hid 20, 30?
This ends this unit on squirrels.
