Painting with items from our nature walk

To make use of those wonderful leaves and twigs and nature walk items I decided to do some painting with Little Boo using them.  She always gets really excited when I mention painting so this was a great hit which ended up being very messy.  It does not have to be messy but Little Boo decided that she also wanted to paint herself as well!

I realised when doing printing the less paint that you have the better.  Sometimes this is difficult with Little Boo as she is always keen to blob on loads of paint. So to overcome this I put the paint on a big tray then spread it thinly and did not get out the paint brushes. This worked effectively as it enabled us to mix the colours effectively.

Instead I made our own paint brush out of a twig and dried pine needles and which was really effective and looks like a mini broomstick. This made Little Boo laugh as we are reading Room on a Broom (Julia Donaldson) at the moment and she said that she was painting with her broom.

We used all the items we collected and it was interesting to see all the different prints that could be created with them.

We decided that we wanted to roll the conker across the page and watched as it made a paint trail.  The leaves we had worked OK but really we should have done this activity as soon as we had collected them or the day after as some were too dry to do an effective print with them.

We are out tomorrow and will be collecting more leaves as I have a few more ideas to try out and want to try the leaves when they are not so dry.  I am sure that Little Boo will not mind doing some more painting!

Our Nature Tray and walk (Part 1)

I love the Autumn it is official before having Little Boo I would not have said this.  However, it is amazing when having a child how your outlook suddenly changes with certain things.  The dark nights, even though cold are a great excuse to snuggle up and read some books, the bad weather has turned us to cooking more (encouraging me to learn) as we need indoor activities. Then on the days the weather is not too bad it is a fine opportunity to splash in the muddy puddles, crunch in the leaves, look for wildlife and hunt for the prettiest leaf.

This is why I considered making a Nature tray.  When at school I can remember having a nature table. However, not having the room in our house for this I turned to making a nature tray less room required and it is portable.  The nature tray is actually a very cheap cat litter tray (do not worry it has never been used for this purpose) this tray has come in so useful for loads of activities and was only £1.99!

We collected the items on many nature walks (do not worry you will probably get some funny looks I know that we have).  The walk itself turned into a wonderful learning experience as Little Boo was talking about everything that she was seeing, smelling and hearing.  She loved feeling the fir trees that we came across.  We had a lengthy conversation about whether we could find Tree Fu Tom, needless to say we tried to find him but could not.  She started to suggest leaves that we should pick because they were, "pretty ones"  as well as finding the odd muddy puddle to jump in! Wellies are a great suggestion and a change of clothes :) Little Boo decided that she also wanted to hug trees something that made me laugh so of course she did it even more! all this fun and we did not have to pay anything, great!

A very brave squirrel coming to say hello 

For the nature tray we have loads of items we collected from our walks.   I have included printed activities that we can enjoy together that are Autumn inspired.  Here is where I got them from

Autumn photograph cards with this resource I just printed it smaller so that I could make cards instead of posters.  We have been using these to play matching games and used them to match with the items in the nature tray

Matching up the conker to the conkers card. 

So far We have only been able to find part of an acorn! 

Autumn counting sheet  Little Boo did really well with this worksheet.  I have placed the worksheet inside a plastic wallet and encouraged her to mark off as she counts them. I then help her to write the number.  The great thing is that the white board marker rubs off after so the sheet can be used many times.  This I found is a cheaper alternative to laminating or printing out the worksheet many times.

Autumn masks These masks are brilliant for playing with.  There is a hedgehog and a red and grey squirrel. Little Boo could not wait to play with them.

Autumn number trace  Again I have printed these smaller so that there were four to a page. I have laminated these and Little Boo has a white board marker to trace them.

Autumn colour in  Hopefully you all saw this link on the facebook page.  There are some lovely Autumn inspired colouring pages.

Autumn Leaves  These have been used to learn colours.  I have been encouraging Little Boo to hop skip and Jump to the colours that I say.  She then calls out the instructions for me and I get a mini work out as well!

I hope that you have enjoyed this post and that it has inspired you to go on a nature walk.

Using leaves- Paper bag puppet owl

We have been busy collecting leaves! So I have been thinking what we could do with them and then I saw a picture of this owl on google and had to pin it! Little Boo liked the idea as well.  The great thing was that we had some foil cases as well which were great to up-cycle as owl eyes.

Little Boo cut the handles off the paper bag

she stuck down the eyes and placed white stickers inside for the centre of the eyes. Later Little Boo decided that she wanted Googly eyes.

There was green paint on the desk which Little Boo insisted should be used for the belly.

We then had our finished result our Little paper bag owl puppet.  Apparently we now need to make a Daddy and a baby one as well.  This was a great activity which I could see linking to the book Owl Babies. I think that the leaves would be better to be laminated first though as this would mean that the puppet will withstand more usage. 

Hope that you enjoy this activity.