Thursday, October 31, 2013

Nurturing Acorns: Halloween Fun!

This week in Nurturing Acorns at Woodlawn Nature Center, we had a little Halloween Fun!

There were lots of animals out from the Haunted Woods going on over the weekend and Halloween. They were fun to explore, even for the littlest ones!


We started by making some simple cards with Halloween themed stickers. 


Later, the children worked together to put together pumpkin bread, each taking turns adding ingredients and stirring. 


While the bread was baking, we had story time. I really liked Boo to You by Lois Ehlert--I like how she used seeds, gourds, and other natural elements to illustrate the story. It's pumpkin time looked at the growth of a pumpkin over time. We had family favorite stories there as well, like The Little Old Lady Who Wasn't Afraid of Anything and Too Many Pumpkins. 


Since we read about pumpkins, we did a sequencing activity with the life cycle of a pumpkin, looking at what happens first, next, and last. 


Going outside for a hike, we looked at the colors of fall, gathering materials around from different areas to do a color match:


We encountered a huge spider web. They loved crawling through it! I would consider putting more up when we study spiders!


We had ghost bananas, our pumpkin bread, and apple slices for snack. 


Later, we had many options to explore, like Halloween slime, though many were not quite sure what to expect with it. There was also fresh playdough and pumpkin sequence cards to sort.


One girl decided she liked the pumpkin molds as little cups for the beans, which worked quite well. Mr. Pumpkin Head was a hit!


Strawing for spiders and categorizing the spiders and insects in the basket were also popular.


Some of the children liked sorting the pumpkins by size and playing with the playdough. These animals  make the actual print! I'll check on the brand and report when I find out. 


Of course, the kids enjoyed the wigwam, cave, local fish, insects, wildlife viewing window, and more!