We Went on a Fall Hunt!!

Teaching the 3 and under set can be challenging sometimes. Seasons, weather, and passing of time can all be a little confusing to little ones. We have read books on Fall, we have talked about what grows or doesn't grow, how the weather begins to get cooler and the most obvious sign of fall... the leaves changing. Yet, when I ask about what we just read in our book or what we just talked about, sometimes I still get we go swimming in the Fall. Not that it's bad, but I figured it was time for some hands on learning. Get outdoors and put some concrete examples in their little hands!!

On our Fall Hunt we were looking for anything we had been reading about, leaves of different colors, pumpkins, scarecrows, flowers (both dormant or alive) and even bugs that may come out more often because it is cooler or damp (worms).

Here is what we found...

What a beautiful garden... we pointed out the scarecrow (though Sprout thought it could be a cowboy) and the pretty purple mums.

We found wet, slimy leaves. Sprout and Roo both observed that the leaves weren't green anymore.

Yay Pumpkins!!!

We were walking up a new street and we all noticed this great big, beautiful Fall tree!! The color was brilliant!!

Mmmmm... that smells good!!

Look I found a Fall Leaf too!!

Playing Peek-a-Boo!!

A lone dandelion :)

I have to say that our neighbors house is our favorite every year. They get all decked out and each year they add new things to the yard. This year we found a great big, gigantic SPIDER!!! They positioned it on top of a bush so it was semi-camouflaged... but we saw it and HAD to get a closer look!!

Whoa... that is big!!
What a great way to end our Fall Hunt!! The kids gathered lots of items, but we didn't bring our nature bags, which means they didn't make it home with us. I think the hands on approach worked well, because now I can relate things we see in a book to things we saw on our walk.


Today we took the green sand out of the indoor sensory table and added some boats and water. I am going to put leaves, pine cones, and other Fall things into for next week, but thought it would be good to clean it out today and with it clean, we thought what could be more fun than water!! Let the Splashing commence!!!

Cheese!!

I got this... I LOVE the water table!!!

Me too!! I swear Shell, I didn't drink it. I may have tried, but see, it all got on my shirt!!

Wow... Another Field Trip!!

We have a great old garden center right around the corner. It is housed in an old brick building that smells of years worth of fertilizer, lime, peat moss, soil and flowers. It is an exciting experience visiting as an adult, I knew the kids would just love it!!



You never know what you'll find and trying to guess what it is used for is part of the fun. Talking about Fall and what happens to trees and flowers this week helped to prepare us for the different things we saw. But this huge wheel barrel full of soil was a lot of fun to look into. We guessed that maybe a dinosaur was buried under all that soil, or maybe flowers, worms and leaves.

Mmmmm... that smells good.

Whoa... what is that???

That's silly!!!

Experiencing the sights and smells too!!!

Getting a picture of this crew isn't hard, it's just getting a good picture, with everyone at least looking my way, is impossible!!!

Ok guys... follow me!!!

Taking our treasures home.



After visiting Brawley Garden Center we went to the local park.

What fun!!!

Look at Little Man trying his hand at climbing the climbing wall... he did pretty good for his first time. He didn't get all the way up, but he used muscles I don't think even he knew he had :)

Sprout really wanted to figure out this climbing wall and she worked at it until she finally made it to the top. After she succeeded in getting up it, she must have climbed it another 10 times to master it. We were all very proud of her!!!

Lil Bit here found those turny things with pictures on them. There isn't really a use for them except to turn them and look at the pictures. I never really liked them before, but today Scamp and Lil Bit spent a lot of time turning them and looking at the pictures.

Look how big this Scamp is getting!!!

We tried again for a group photo during our water break... only 1 looking at me, but Sprout looks so cute I had to use this one!!!

Another successful Field Trip!! What fun we had... next week it is off to a nature trail to look at Fresh Fall Leaves. I hope they will be turning colors by then, if not, we may just have to go again the following week :)

What have we been doing??

It has been a few days since I have posted but we have been pretty busy here at Kozy Kids. We are learning about Fall and doing a lot of playing.

This week we started off with a book called We Love Fall by Diane Muldrow. Very short, cute book that highlights the key things about Fall. I took out some silk fall leaves, we touched them, compared then and then we did leaf rubbings. I took all the leaves and put them under some taped down art paper and gave the kids some crayons. They could then try to find the leaves, draw/color leaves that they made or just make marks on the paper, whichever suited them.

We also played Hide-n-Seek

Played with the color magnet board

Found and compared the balls


and...went to the playground

There is so much to learn about and explore, all we have to do is recognize that it doesn't always come to us the way we expect it to :)

Little Apple

We started our Fall/Harvest Theme Unit with something we can all relate to, APPLES!!! We are having a week full of Apples!! Today we started off by reading Little Apple by Brigitte Weninger. We love this book for its illustrations and simple text. I use it every year to show the many different shades of an apple. The illustrations really show off apples many colors.

First we compared an apple, banana and a plum. We talked about how it felt, what it smelled like and the different colors. Sprout and Roo also brought up how they liked apples with cinnamon, but not banana's with cinnamon (I promise, I never tried to give them banana's with cinnamon, but I think we might have to try it, it may just be yummy).

Then we got down to the fun stuff.... Apple Spin Art. Ok, so we didn't really use apples, but we used our salad spinners to create a multi-colored apple with paint and mini paper plates.

(I swear she was having fun!!)

What fun!! The picture above is of our plates, before the stem and leaves are added, it takes a while for them to dry as the paint has a layered kind of effect, so even when the top layer seems dry, it isn't dry underneath.