Treasure

Yesterday was the home ed early years group Autumn Treasure hunt. I started this last year and it went so well that I decided to do it again!

I simply made a sheet of things to find, with words and pictures so that those who can't read yet can still join in fairly independently and printed out a bunch of copies. I handed out colouring pens so that each thing could be circled when it was found.

The list contained: a red leaf, a brown leaf, a yellow leaf, a conker, a twig, an acorn, a feather, a stone, a pine cone, a sycamore seed.

The kids seemed to have so much fun carrying their wee baskets around the Hermitage of Braid looking for the treasures. Many games were played along the way, such as hide and seek in the wooded areas and pretend-to-be-stuck-in-a-tree where one child climbed a tree and the other children all pretended to be firemen coming to rescue the stuck person and worked together to free them.

It was a very beautiful way to spend a day.

Seasonal

The last couple of days we've been working on a project to take down all the beautiful art and craft work on our walls and replace it with new, Autumn and Halloween inspired stuff. The summer is now well and truly over!

I thought it might be worth posting some of the gorgeous photos from this summer here for you to see. We've had so many adventures, lots of outdoor visits and explorations.

It's harder to get outside frequently in autumn. We manage it when we can, but the wind and rain make things a bit unpleasant, even if the leaves are spectacular. It's time for cosy, stay-at-home things. We will enjoy it, even if we do also miss the sunshine we were lucky enough to have this year.

As a little, final goodbye to summer, one of the cocoons we are caterpillar-sitting for a friend has hatched. We were doing some adding up and taking away sums when we heard the soft, flapping sound of its wings. We have since spent the morning watching and feeding it, and learning all about the life cycle of butterflies.

It has been a nice break from colouring in spiders and painting bats, that's for sure!