We aren’t even a week into fall and I am already enamored with it. This does not surprise me, it happens every year. I love the fall. Don’t get me wrong, I am a four seasons girl, I enjoy all of the other seasons almost as much, the cold and the snow of winter, the beauty and newness of spring and the fun of summer (I could do without the hot), but the fall has something a little extra. I love the smell, the color, the cool, the crisp, the fresh, and the coziness of it all...
After our trip to the library last week we came home with a couple of autumn books. One of the books was a children’s leaf identification book. We have been enjoying looking at the pictures in the book and seeing which leaves we recognize from the ones that we have been seeing on the ground on our walks. Today we decided to bring some of those leaves home with us and do a “leaf project”. I put leaf project in quotes because I remember being assigned to do a “leaf project” when I was in fifth grade. We were to collect leaves and then identify them. I remember being one of the only kids in my class who actually enjoyed this project. I have always liked finding things in nature and then looking them up to figure out what they are, I guess that’s the Biology girl in me!
When we got home from our collection walk we pressed the leaves together between wax paper with an iron and then looked in our book to identify them.
I think we may need to find a more inclusive book because we did find some leaves that were not in our book. I have a feeling this will be an ongoing autumnal project, especially as the leaves begin to get prettier and prettier!
Also on our walk I found more acorn caps! I think I might have a bit of an obsession with acorn caps now. It is very hard for me to walk around outside and not pick up a half a dozen caps or more. Last year I remember Violet and I searching for acorns that still had their caps on so that we could bring them home and draw cute little faces on them and then hang them around the house. This project proved to be a bit more difficult then I had anticipated because the squirrels had been there before us and were already hiding them all! The ones that we were able to find made me feel a bit guilty since we took them from the squirrels. This year it seems that the squirrels are rewarding me for not taking their acorns and are now delivering their unused acorn caps to my backdoor! So, between the squirrel deliveries and my full pockets, I now have quite the acorn cap collection…
Hmmm, what to do with them...?
