Bring the Outdoors in: Leaf Prints

It's time to go collecting again!  For this month's activities, we will be taking advantage of the beautiful fall foliage.  To complete this activity you will need: leaves, paper, a flat working surface, tape and crayons with the papers removed.

Hand your children their collecting baskets and ask them to collect as many leaves as they would like.  Encourage them to notice the new colors of the leaves and the variety of shapes and sizes.

Once you are satisfied with your leaf collection, head indoors for this simple art activity.

If you are working with children under the age of 3 start by selecting a couple leaves and taping them to your work space.  Older children will be able to keep the leaves in place on their own.

Tape a piece of paper or two down on top of your leaves.  Now that your station is set up, invite your children to join you.

Demonstrate to your child hold to hold the crayon sideways to rub over the leaf.

Once complete, you will get a print that looks something like this!  They are great for framing and using for festive fall decoration about your home.

 Before or after completing this activity, here are a few great books about leaves and fall that you can read with your children:

Fall Leaves Fall

Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf

Look What I Did With a Leaf
(This book has some other great leaf activity ideas!)

Bring the Outdoors in: Herb Potpourri

With our trusty collection baskets in hand, Isabel, Sean and I headed for our herb garden to collect the makings for an herbal potpourri!  Items needed: collecting basket, herb garden, small containers for potpourri.  Old baby food jars work great and are the perfect size for little hands.

Isabel and Sean got right to work picking as many herbs as they could.

They paused frequently the give the herbs a sniff.  As your child is taking time to, "Stop and smell the roses", be sure that you are identifying each individual herb they are smelling.  Thus extending their learning experience and expanding their vocabulary.

Once a suitable amount of herbs have been collected, it is time to head to your indoor work space.  There really is no recipe for this potpourri.  You can use whatever herbs you have on hand.  Hardy perennial herbs do work best though: Thyme, rosemary, sage, oregano, or lavender for example.

Encourage your children to begin tearing the herbs into small pieces to place into your potpourri containers.  We didn't have any baby food jars on hand, but really any small beautiful container will do.  Be sure to carefully supervise young children if using glass or ceramic containers.  This is an opportunity to help them learn about using gentle hands and treating fragile items carefully.

Isabel giving her completed potpourri, a final sniff test.

Once your potpourri is complete, find it a home in your kitchen, dinning room or bathroom.  It will add a beautiful scent to any space.  Guests arriving to your home will imagine you must be cooking up something tasty.  Once the potpourri seems to be losing its muster, simply pick a few more herbs to add in.



Christine can be found online in the following locations: Facebook, Blogger and her Etsy shop:

Bring the Outdoors in: Stick Sculptures

It's time to find your collecting baskets again for this latest installment of Bring the Outdoors In.  Today we will be heading outdoors to collect sticks of varying lengths and shapes.  All you will need to complete this project is, a basket for collecting, sticks and salt dough. A recipe for making salt dough can be found here. 

Set your little ones to work collecting sticks to fill their basket.  I showed Sean and Isabel how to carefully break the sticks in half if they were too big.  Isabel was particularly fond of this activity.  With older children, you can encourage them to find sticks of varying shapes and sizes.  Ask them to consider what they would like to create using their sticks.

Once you are satisfied with the sticks you have collected, head indoors to your work space.

Introduce your children to the salt dough and demonstrate how to push the sticks into the dough.  Once they have the idea, step back and watch the artists at work.  With young toddlers and preschoolers, they will enjoy simply poking the sticks into a big, sturdy hunk of dough.  Older children can be shown how to roll the dough into small balls to connect two sticks together to create more detailed/representational sculptures.

Sean clapped with joy and pride each time he was able to successfully poke a stick into the dough and make it stand up.

Once your children have completed their sculptures, place it in a sunny spot to air dry.  This dough will usually take about 1-2 days to air dry depending on thickness.  Even toddlers are able to create beautiful abstract art using natural materials.  Once dried, salt dough can be painted using tempra paint to add another layer of beauty to your sculpture.

These sculptures can be brought back to nature and used to decorate your outdoor spaces as a picnic table centerpiece, or even place them in your own vegetable or flower garden to add a bit of whimsy to the space.



Christine can be found online on her blog Belly Bear Baby Gear, facebook, and her etsy shop:

Bring the Outdoors in: Beautiful Things - Collecting and Sorting

Items found in nature contain such beauty, and children seem to be particularly attuned to this beauty. With only a few simple items, you can encourage your children to participate in this fun and educational nature based activity.

All you will need is a paper bag (or other collecting vessel), an empty egg carton and the great outdoors!

Begin by giving your child a paper bag and bringing them outside. A walk in the woods would provide for some great diverse items for collection, but as you will see, your own back yard will do just fine.

If you are working with young children, you may need to show them what to do by placing a few items in their bag for them. Encourage them to collect as many small three dimensional items as they'd like.

Sean was particularly drawn to this patch of grass and rocks in our yard. He discovered big and little rocks as well as a few left over acorn caps. As your child collects more items, this is an opportunity for you to build their nature vocabulary by naming and labeling what they are collecting.



Once your bags are nice and full bring them inside and pour the contents into the top portion of your egg carton.

Sit back for a moment and enjoy the spoils of all your hard work. Allow your child to study the items and consider how they may be sorted.



Young toddlers will simply enjoy exploring the items and filling the cups in the egg carton at random. You can begin encouraging them to notice the similarities and differences by explaining "Let's put all the rocks together" or "Look at all the pink petals".

When working with older children you can encourage more advanced sorting skills. Allow them to study what they have collected and decide how they will sort the beautiful things they have found. They may decide to sort by color placing all the brown things and pink things together, or they may decide sorting by type of object makes the most sense for them.

This activity will encourage your child to begin developing their mathematical thinking skills such as sorting objects varying by one or two attributes all the while enjoying the natural objects they collected. Take a moment to enjoy the beauty found outside with your children and help foster the next generation of nature lovers.



Christine can be found online on facebook, and her etsy shop:

Bring the Outdoors in: Grass Clipping

Now that we are well into the season of spring many of you out there are seeding your lawns and watching them grow.  With plenty of grass seed on hand, you have the opportunity to create a fun sensory/fine motor growth opportunity for your children.  All you'll need is some top soil, grass seed, a dish pan and some children's scissors.

Let's begin: Have your children help you fill your dish pan with a few inches of dirt and sprinkle a liberal amount of seed on top of the dirt.  Let your little ones help water the seed and dirt.

Then place your pan in a nice sunny space.

Now will be the time for patience and learning.  Encourage your child to help you water the seeds over the next couple weeks as they sprout and grow.  As the grass begins sprouting, bring the pan down and let your children have a feel.  Ask prompting questions such as: "How does it feel?" and "Is the grass long or short?"

In approximately 2-3 weeks, you will have lovely lush grass in a pan which will possibly prompt your husband to ask, "When you're done with this, can I transplant it to the dead spot in our lawn?"  Until then, it's time to get out the scissors and invite your child to snip away.

Young toddlers will need help learning how to hold the scissors and snip the grass.  You can show them how to use both hands and open and close the scissors.  As always, this activity should be done under close adult supervision, even children's scissors can hurt.  While your child trims the grass, you can ask prompting questions such as, "What do the scissors do?" and "What is happening to the grass?"  Also allow children the opportunity to simply feel the grass with their hands.  My little ones even tried sticking their toes in the tub!

Older children may enjoy a variation on this activity.  Using an old nylon, sprinkle some grass seed into the toe, pour some dirt on top of the seed and tie off the nylon.  You can then draw a face onto the nylon with a permanent marker and water it regularly.  You will soon have a little nylon person with grass for hair.  Your child will enjoy giving him a haircut!

This fun activity meets several early learning standards as noted by the National Association for the Education of Young Children

Science:
-Use their senses to learn about objects in the environment. discover that they can make things happen and solve simple problems.

Physical Development:
-Infants and toddlers/twos have multiple opportunities to develop fine-motor skills by acting on their environments using their hands and fingers in a variety of age-appropriate ways.
-Children are provided varied opportunities and materials that support fine-motor development.

Enjoy this fun learning activity with you children and maybe even grow a small patch of grass for a lawn in need.

Bring the Outdoors in: Nature collage

Looking for a way to enjoy and capture the color and beauty found in early spring?  Then this fun, simple activity will be a perfect experience for you and your children.  Not many materials are needed.

Clear contact paper (as a side note, this is not as easily found as I was anticipating.  When looking for clear contact paper, do not go to your local grocery store, drug store or Staples as I attempted.  After 5 miserable failed attempts, I finally found the apparently illusive contact paper at Home Depot of all places), items from nature: grass, flowers, leaves..., string or ribbon, a hole punch, and a basket to collect your nature items.

While outdoors with your children offer them a basket and often all you'll need to do is take a step back and watch.  Children are natural collectors of beautiful, natural items and will make quick work of finding things to place in their baskets.

I was inspired to write about this by my 17 month old daughter.  Upon arriving home recently, she climbed out of the car and immediately bee-lined for the lawn where she quickly plucked a tiny acorn lid from the grass.  She was amazed by this beautiful item and insisted on bringing it indoors.  This moment reminded me of the many nature collages I have made over the years with the preschool aged students in my class.


Once their baskets are full, this is where the clear contact paper comes in.  You may now begin placing the natural items directly onto the contact paper.  Flat items work best for this.  Izzy's little acorn cap would be a bit challenging to use in this application.

If you are working with young toddlers as I was here, they will not only enjoy sticking items to the contact paper, but will want some time to simply enjoy the tactile experience of the paper itself!

Now that you have filled one piece of contact paper with your beautiful things, you can either place a new piece of contact paper on top to sandwich the items in between, or you could simply fold the paper in half as I did here.

This project is so open ended you can make any size collage you would like.

Once your collage is complete, there are a variety of applications for it.  If you made a small collage, punch a hole in the top, put a piece of string through and instant book mark!

These nature collages also make lovely window hangings.  They truly are a sight to see when the sun shines through.  Be creative and use your imagination (2 things young children are great at).  The variety and beauty found in nature will provide brilliant works of art.

Bring the outdoors in: Snow

Sometimes you can't go and enjoy the great outdoors.  That doesn't mean you can't bring the outdoors inside.  For this experience we brought some fluffy wintery white into our living room.

Sean and Isabel love the snow, but as they are still young, they don't tolerate being out in the cold for very long.  Bringing a tub of snow into the house gave them the opportunity to explore the snow at their leisure. 

Not many supplies are needed for this activity: a large sheet or table cloth to cover the floor, a dish pan, and a few kitchen utensils.  I provided them with spoons, forks and plastic cups for this occasion.  And of course a good dose of snow!

Isabel and Sean made quick work of this snow.  Of course their favorite thing was eating it!  Next time it's just too cold to go out and enjoy the snow, go ahead and bring some in.  Sit back and enjoy the show.  Our house was filled with squeals of delight as Sean and Isabel marveled at the feel of the cold snow on their hands. 

Stay tuned for more, bring the outdoors in activities.  New opportunities present themselves with each season!