Sunday, December 16, 2012

Nurturing Acorns--Natural Gifts

Each week, Nurturing Acorns at Woodlawn Nature Center has a different theme. Several moms collaborate for a natural preschool experience. We start with letter work, work on a craft, have story and song time, eat a related edible craft, hit the trails at Woodlawn Nature Center, and return for sensory play.

This week our theme was Natural Gifts. We used glitter and glue to explore the letter G for gifts.

                        

We read a couple of books, Snow Tree and Night Tree, which helped explore the colors and gifts of nature to decorate a tree and a family that goes on a hike each year to decorate a tree for the animals. Since there was snow out, we had to sing Once There Was a Snowman.



It was great to have snow on our hike--this provided such a different level of interest as we explored. We found ice crystal, made snowballs, and watched the snow glisten in the sun. We checked the oat cereal feeders we left for the birds out on the trail last week. One was left untouched. Holes are always interesting to find and explore.



Back inside, we made several natural gifts. You can't do something like this without decorated pinecones, right? Some children left their feeders at the nature center while others brought their feeders home. Our feeder is hanging outside our front window, but appears to be untouched!


We made salt dough ornaments. Here you see moms and children working, learning, playing, and exploring together, which is a basic structure of the group.


These trees will look great on our tree at home, especially since they were made by one of our own.



We also decorated twig stars.


A favorite activity each week is the sensory bin. It always has rotating items to pour, scoop, and touch.



There are a few openings for the session running from January-March. For more information, visit Woodlawn Nature Center.