leaf walk

We took advantage of the wonderful autumn weather to take a "leaf walk" where we found and collected various types of leaves. This first photos was taken in our driveway! The Sugar Maples that line the drive lay down a colorful carpet for us to enjoy.




Zoo Boy shows off his biggest find of the day -- a giant oak leaf.

J discovered that if he piles dry leaves up and steps on them, they crackle like fireworks. Pretty cool discovery!





Do you SEE what beautiful weather we've been having?!

We've had a lot of opportunity to weave some of our circle activities into our walks, creating more of an organic circle for the second half of our week. We're still enjoying our Pumpkin Patch Adventure Circle on occasion, but when the weather is like this, it makes NO sense to stay indoors!


Dramatic leaves on a young Oak.

The kids have been presenting me with a lot of interesting tree facts that they learned during Tree Camp this summer. Which is a wonderful example of the 3-fold learning cycle. They were presented with the material in August, it "slept" for the month of September, and now it is "reawakened" in our experiences in October. The best part is that the kids are not just spurting out facts -- they are weaving in lines from our circle songs and verses, themes from our nature stories, and the overall magical quality of the seasons (like when they say that the falling leaves look like fairies dancing to the ground). Very holistic, and pretty darned cool!

J had the best find of the day -- all three types of Sassafras leaves -- oval, mitten, and three-fingered glove.

We brought all of our leafy treasure back home with us. The kids spent snack time examining them, using one of our Story Time books (Leaves, Leaves, Leaves by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace) to identify them, and playing with them. Then we used them in an art activity (will post about that a little later). They're still scattered across our dining room table, and they added a festive air to our story work today.