November 10, 2008

Fall Studies - Leaves and Squirrels

For our fall studies this year we did a couple of weeks learning about leaves and squirrels. (Jacob had asked for the squirrels a few weeks ago.) We just read a few of our favorite fall books and did some of this unit from HomeSchoolShare.

We started off the week doing a nature walk around our property. Of course we picked the two hours where a cold front blew in and the temperature dropped twenty degrees!




Mattie got totally in to collecting everything but leaves!


Our beautiful treasures!


We came in and sorted all of our leaves after we checked out all that we found.


And it was so cold, it was a perfect time for some hot apple cider in our special mugs that Uncle Peter made!


Then Jacob made his leaf picture using some of what he found.


We had to have some maple candy to go with the week! (This is a major treat for Jacob as it's one of the few kinds of candy he can have. I was very excited to run across it this week!)


And we made some yummy cookies from pie crust and filled with chocolate chips.



Another day we went to a local park and searched for leaves and acorns.




And these are the enormous acorns that fall from our chestnut oak next to our house. They are 1 1/2" long! You can see the difference between those and the oak tree at the park!


And a walk in the trees isn't a walk in the trees without a little shooting mommy with a gun shaped branch.


A little leaf partying!


We also went back took Robert up to Natural Tunnel for another walk up there. (I have pics of that day for another post.)


Mattie begs to do school like Jacob. So this week I printed out for her a sheet that has leaves to match from one side of the page to the other. Not surprisingly considering her powers of observation, she did a great job!






And these leaf rubbings are one of my favorite things to do. Last year we picked up leaves from our street. This year we stuck with leaves just from our property and these are some of what we found. It was fun to know just what we had on our land. That's something we've never really looked at before. We discovered have Sassafras trees galore around our house!

Happy Fall to You!!

1 comment:

Valerie said...

Looks like a fun unit! You have quite a variety of trees on your property!