Greening Sam and Avery

fall fun - corn maze

A walk through a field of corn can be quite the experience!

You never know what you might find!

 
There is plenty of room to run!

 

And some of them, like the one we went to, have questions as you make your way through. Our questions were all nature related! Woohoo!! Most of them were a bit advanced for the girls but the adults had fun trying to guess and figure them out.
 
And it is very fun to find an ear of corn and try to pick all the kernels off.

 
And the corn is just SO tall!! HA! (can you tell how annoyed my husband is at being forced to do this?!)

A corn maze can be a great little adventure while you are out finding that perfect pumpkin!

 
Hope you all had a great weekend!

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The Nitty Gritty!

Want to find a corn maze in Wisconsin?  Check it out a list of them here.

And at the same site you can find mazes all over the country!

Don't forget to the get the pumpkin too.

 

fall fun - leaf walk

'Tis the season!

We did our first leaf walk today because the colors are starting to really change and Sam loves the yellow leaves. I gave her a small bag for collecting and we did a long walk through our neighborhood. At various points the girls got distracted by dandelion puffs, acorns and even a family selling pumpkins! But we always returned to looking for great colorful leaves that we could put in our plant press.

So, what will we do with the leaves? Well, we didn't get to any crafts today but there are TONS of ideas out there waiting for us.

We have done a lot of crafts in the past with leaves. You can check out a list of them here.

I also found a few fun sites with ideas that I am excited to check out.

Enchanted Learning - this one has some neat leaf printables; I think I may print some of these for quiet time activities for Sam.

Making Friends - a lot of these crafts don't look like they use real leaves but I think you could use real leaves even when they say to use fake leaves.

Apples 4 The Teacher - this one has good looking crafts but it also has an AWESOME book list! It is a complete Fall unit so there are activities and ideas in all areas of learning. So fun!

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The Nitty Gritty!

Fall is a great time to collect but be sure that your little ones know that you are collecting for a reason. It is important that they understand we don't just go into nature and take whatever we want, as much as we want. Every part of nature has a purpose and role in nature. If we remove too much we can change things. Sam is very aware of how we collect, what she is allowed to collect and that we always do something with the things that we collect.

On another note...if you want to press your leaves it is important that your little one knows the leaves still have to have moisture in them. I tell Sam that the leaves can't be "crunchy" yet. Leaves that are too dried out will not press well so be sure to stick with leaves that are freshly fallen from the trees!

 

preschool pumpkin craft

We picked a bunch of pumpkins yesterday from our backyard pumpkin patch. Sam had so much fun helping to wash them off and then decide where the big ones should go by our front door and where the little ones should go inside the house.

Today we decided to make some of our own paper pumpkins.

We used orange construction paper, pipe cleaners and scissors. This was a cute craft for Sam to do on her own. She had to really focus and concentrate to cut the strips but knowing that she did it all on her own was so cool. I love how imperfect her strips are.

The right amount of challenge and a cute result meant that Sam stayed interested and wanted to see her own end result. Even though she got frustrated a few times she stuck with it and made her own pumpkin. In the time she made one, I made four!

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The Nitty Gritty!

I got this idea from Pinterest and only revised it a little bit. You can check out the original idea at the Crafty Crow. And there are many other pumpkin crafts to check out there too.