For the last few weeks, Annabelle and I have been busy scouring various local parks and woods with our wicker baskets collecting leaves, conkers, acorns and Autumn treasures! Well actually – I had a wicker basket, Annabelle had her “whisker basket”! We found some fabulous free resources on Nature Detectives such as scavenger hunts and leaf identification sheets to help with any tricky finds!
First stop, Woodbank park!
Hey, this is prickly!
Pretty leaves
Every treasure hunter needs a rest!
Checking for pine cones
“I’m doing these steps by myself Mummy.”
Some of our treasures
Each day we emptied our goodies into our big wooden bowl and sorted out our favourites. We talked lots about which items we liked and why, comparing the colours shapes and sizes of the different leaves and seeds.
Once we had a sizeable collection, we took them all outside to explore. I took a selection of baskets and bowls and let Annabelle sort and transfer as she pleased. After a while, I started sorting some leaves by colour and she joined in – a great opportunity to expand colour vocabulary with words such as light, dark, pale, speckled, golden etc.
Busy sorting
Throwing conkers into the bowl
Annabelle noticed that some of the leaves were quite brittle and she had a great time scrunching them up with her hands and stamping on them shouting ‘scrunchy, stamp stamp!’
Stamping on the ‘scrunchy’ leaves!
After we had finished exploring our Autumnal treasures, we chose our favorite few leaves and conkers to take back inside, and left the rest outside for the squirrels and birds. It didn’t take long – within minutes of going inside, there were some eager squirrels in the garden exploring our cast offs!
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