Nature Led Learning: Signs of Autumn

As it is now officially autumn, on our nature walk this week, we looked for the changes in the environment that the change in season had brought.

We started off by examining the leaves, sorting them into piles according to colour or leaf type and using them to make pictures. We listened to the sounds that they made as they crunched underfoot and had some fun throwing and kicking them.

We found an apple tree that had a huge windfall. We collected lots of the apples and used them to make a caterpillar. I extended this for Betty and asked to put them into size order. This supported the younger children’s development as well as she talked about the biggest apple and the smallest apple. We had lots of fun arranging the apples into shapes and letters.

Although there wasn’t a huge amount of blackberries left, we collected what we could find. When we got home, we mushed them up into some water, sieved them and used them to ‘tie-dye’ some old white t-shirts. Afterwards, I dipped the t-shirts into cold saltwater to ‘fix’ the dye. Betty’s t-shirts were school style blouses which appears to have a coating on the fibres to repel stains. They looked quite good when we first did them but by the next day had dried a weird blue green colour. They looked more like something had been spilled on them so we shall have to practise this some more.