Bringing Autumn Indoors

We had such a good time at 4th of July Canyon on Saturday that we just had to bring some of it home with us. Today, we finally got some time to craft with our leaves, acorns, and seeds. First, I cut out a small circle (about 8 inches in diameter) from heavy cardboard. Then, I cut a smaller hole in the middle. The kids then painted the ring with a thick coat of green tempera paint.

Once the paint dried, we strategically hot glued the leaves, acorns, and seeds that we found on our hike to our wreath.

Here is our finished product. Now I just have to find a place to hang them!

We still had some left over leaves that we couldn't part with, so we ironed them between sheets of waxed paper and hung them on our sliding glass door giving them a stained-glass effect. If you decide to do this with your kids, I discovered that you should use a low temp. iron, and only go over the wax paper once. You'll be tempted to go over it several times with the iron, but doing so will loosen the wax paper and it won't stick.

Manzano Moutains: 4th of July Canyon

Isaiah 55:12 "For you shall go out with joy, And be led out with peace; the mountains and the hills shall break forth into singing before you, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.

Challenge #5

We just completed week 6 of school, and have made it to challenge #5 in our nature studies! I'm very excited that we have been able to keep our nature studies an important part of our school week. If you haven't checked out Barb's Handbook of Nature Study blog, you really need to get over there and check it out! I think our focus area is going to be trees and leaves since fall is in the air, and we are spotting more and more colorful leaves everyday. This little guy, however, caught Grant's eye today.

Leaf rubbings are so fun to do!

Nature Study at the Park

With lots of sunshine and cool temperatures today, we just had to take our studies and a lunch to a nearby park.

We studied leaves, and are trying to find out what kind of tree this one came from. If anyone knows, please comment and tell us! We all had fun doing leaf rubbings in our nature journals.

Chloe found these berries and the tree they came from.

We are going to try and observe the different trees in our area in the coming months and note their changes.