Day 19: walk and rub

Well we went to a near by conservancy to see what colors we could find. There weren't as many flowers blooming as a I had hoped but we did find some. I had the camera along but apparently need to read the owners manual or something because this is the only picture of the flowers that turned out! And all the flowers are looking the wrong way!

I am probably completely embarrassing my sister the VERY skilled photographer! Sam was a bit whinny, not really focusing on what I was saying about the flowers but did the walk with Avery and I anyway. But I would definitely call it a successful outing. Why, you ask? Because when we left and we headed to a water park she looked out the car window and said "mommy look at all those white flowers!" pointing to a roadside field of Queen Anne's Lace. She has never pointed out flowers from the car before and never stated the color of the flower. A big proud mama smile came over my face in the car.

Side note - Not related to the theme for the week but on our way out of the conservancy we spotted this on the sidewalk.
Sam sat on the sidewalk for quite a while watching the ants attack the little caterpillar. Such a great teachable moment! We talked about how the ants were working together like a team to eat something that was so much bigger than them. She found this fascinating.

This evening while I made baby food I gave Sam a project to work on. I took the leaves out of her plant press (the one that I blogged about here actually worked really well!!) and laid them all out on the table. I gave her a stack of white paper, each piece folded in half, and a few crayons. I told her we were going to do leaf rubbings and showed her how to put the leaf inside the folder paper.
It seemed like she was going to get it but after just a few seconds she stopped coloring and said "look mommy a butterfly!" Not sure where she saw the butterfly but she wasn't seeing the leaves. She liked picking out which leaves to put in the paper and picking out the colors but wasn't pressing down hard enough on the paper or getting that she needed to color with the side of the crayon. Two years old is just a little too young I guess for leaf rubbings. I love doing these and will certainly keep trying because I don't think she is too far off from being able to do them, but not yet.

I did embrace her seeing of butterflies and made her one. She looked at it and said "Oh mommy that is beautiful!"

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The Nitty Gritty!

We don't use crayons a lot for plain coloring so maybe a two year old that is more used to coloring with crayons might be able to do this better. Folding the paper over and putting the leaves in the middle is a great way to do leaf rubbings with younger kids because it helps to hold the leaf in place. You don't have to use pressed leaves for rubbings, green/fresh or brown/dried leaves work just fine too.