Promenade Dans Les Bois: Pencil Shaving Art

Keeping up with our discovery of the woods, and beyond, we continue to explore the beauty of the season. Last week, we "branched" out in our art session. Interestingly, this was not the intention at the beginning of the day (or our session for that matter).

I began by sharpening the pencil crayons that the children needed (we only use a few colours, or everything gets chaotic). 
As I was setting up our activity, I noticed a beautiful array of colours from the shavings. I wondered what we could do with it :), so I collected all the shavings and decided to make coloured pencil shaving art with the kids.

Materials:
– we used our sketch books (the page can be ripped out and framed) 
– pencil shavings 
– glue/glue stick
– pencil

Method

-– draw outline of picture you want to fill in

-– spread glue on paper or canvas

-– gather up pencil shavings

-– spread pencil shavings on glued paper

-– brush off excess shavings
-- I like to put a piece of paper of top of the art and close the book. This keeps the pieces in tact.

This is a great and easy way to recycle pencil crayon shavings. 
Happy crafting.

Outside your window: Birds...migrating or not...

We've been looking out for birds. We see birds coming and going, but we never have our camera OR we're often busy with other things. Nicola Davis discusses migrating bird - geese (actually), but we were not picky...we like all birds.
Due to napping conflicts, we didn't get to go far for our exploring day. We went out to the backyard, and not surprisingly, we saw many birds. Most of them were far up in the sky, but it was still fun looking and pointing them out.
Look at our captures:

So we learnt that some birds migrate, and that they migrate for many reasons, like for food, safety and breeding...really neat.

Outside your window: amazing worms

Do you want your kids to be completely captivated by nature? There are so many ways to achieve this. One way that never fails is pointing out critters of every kind. One of the greatest things that I have experienced with kids is their ability to make up stories about just about anything.
I asked the boy to think about where the worm was coming from - where he was going -what kind of adventures he's had (and) seeing that the worm had no feet I questioned how long it would take him to get to where he was going.

fall reminders

 from our book outside your window by nicola davies

Outside your window: leaves & a mobile

I love celebrating the changing of the seasons. This year has been different, because we had snow in September...so we keep looking out for drastic changes in the weather. One thing that has been consistent, however, are the beautiful leaves all around.

Last week we made a Falling Leaf Mobile to honor the changing color of the leaves! 

We were able to practice a lot of fine motor skills such as drawing, cutting with scissors, glue control.We also looked at, and identified various types of leaves.

Materials List:

Stick (found on nature walk or in the park)

thread or ribbon

heavyweight card stock coloring page 

paint and/or crayons

white glue

glitter/stickers/whatever the kids want to use

fall reminders

 from our book outside your window by nicola davies

Outside your window: acorns

Reading about acorns has been the highlight of our week. I think it's all very interesting because, the kids learned that it takes a very VERY long time for an oak tree to grow. Of course, the term "a long time" is relative when you are talking to young kids anyway. 

In addition, (so far) we have not seen any acorns on our nature walks, therefore, the children have never held one in their hands. 

With no acorns in sigh - we made our own tree and coloured acorns!

fall reminders

 from our book outside your window by nicola davies

Outside your window: apples

Here stands the apple tree, strong and green

Here are the apples that hang between

A strong wind blows and knocks them to the ground

Here is the basket to take them all to town

inside

fall reminders

 from our book outside your window by nicola davies

Not sure which apples to use when cooking or baking? Here is a great chart that I always find very helpful.

outside your window: fungi

We have been searching for wonderful fall reminders

 from our book "outside your window" by nicola davies

a must read for fall & nature table stuff

Outside your window by nicola davies 

is a new favorite book of ours and it is now on our nature table 

(which is coming together slowly but surely)

the books is

an awesome, rich treasury of poems relating to

each season showing nature in every place 

~ especially outside your window...

love it so much

that i decided that we would do a scavenger hunt

and search for all the beautiful "fall" reminders

list of reminders

1. berries...

2. colourful leaves

3. geese

4. spiderlings

5. feather

6. acorn

7. worms

8. apples

9. squirrels

10. fungi

activities

:. bake bread

:. harvest summer fruits & veggies

:. pick berries/bake a berry crumble

...stay tuned for our fall nature table photos

 

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