Leaf Salt Dough Bowls

At church recently, I noticed the upper elementary girls making a fun project that I thought I'd document. They made salt dough in a variety of colors and squashed the colorful balls down to make a calico of colors. After rolling the dough out flat, they used leaves for a template and cut around the shapes. It's colorful and organic shaped!

They draped their cut out leaves over bowls to air dry as a bowl shape. These will be so pretty! 

Nature Play: 11 Ways to Play with Leaves!

The leaves are looking gorgeous at our house right now, with the Virginia Creeper's bright red, the Sassafras yellow, the Maple's yellow, orange, and red, and even the Poison Ivy's orange. Yes, I stay away from the latter!

There are many fun ways to connect with the beautiful fall leaves--just stay away from the poison ivy! :-) Here are 11 ways that we have tried. Be sure to click on the links to see our experiences with these options.

Nurturing Acorns: Exploring Trees!

This week at our nature preschool group, we explore Tree-mendous Trees! The boys helped me collect various tree related items. We went to Krider Gardens in Middlebury and found a few horse chestnuts and buckeyes. I love the various textures! We also found an osage orange tree driving home from church the other day. What a find! I made my husband turn around and grabbed a couple from the road. Yes, I break for osage orange!

Finding Nature After the Storm!

A few other posts related to nature service projects:

River Clean Up

Invasive Species Pull

National Public Lands Day

Service--Outdoor service project ideas and TIPS! 

Working Together--Cleaning up as an extended family at my grandparents' house

Litter Pick Up--Thoughts on picking up trash


I woke up the other day after sleeping blissfully through the night to hear that the big willow tree in my parents' yard was down from the wind the night before. Yes, we slept through ALL of it!

We love that tree! It holds the horse swing, provides shade, graces us with long tendrils, and is a landmark when we're out in the boats. Not only was their tree down, but trees were down in most of the yards around us and branches were everywhere (including ours--just not as obvious). We went to help out the clean up effort and do a little nature exploration.

Some things we found: 

1. The root ball of the willow tree--it made a huge crater underneath! We could see the root system well.

2. A crawdad--it was way back by the house. We never see them back there! Since this one was dead, I think we're saving it for a little dissection soon. That should be very soon before it starts stinking! I know the boys have kept the heads or claws when we've found them before, but never dissected one. 

3. Shadows and the texture of the bark. What cool lines! By the way, all the kayaks and canoe were right there where they were left!  

4. Textures of wood! There was some decay in the tree (reminds me of dental cavities for some reason!). Parts crumbled apart. Near the knots or burls, the wood was quite hard and smooth--it almost reminded us of plastic. There were holes and cavities throughout. I even found a good specimen full of woodpecker holes! I'm keeping that for programs.

 

5. Leaves! We took a walk down to see the tree down over the road. We found pinecones, acorns, and other novelties. We also found lots of branches with leaves intact. We could talk about the different types of oaks, tulip poplar, maples, mulberries, and more! 

6. One of the helpers used her great observation skills and found this lovely dragonfly. They are usually so fast we don't get to see them up close! I had just been watching a TED talk on the migration of dragonflies. How neat to see this beauty in such detail. They have such unique wings--the TED talk mentioned dragonfly wings can independently move separately for great mobility and control, even flying upside down! My friend mentioned they are like helicopters! They also eat mosquito larvae while in the water as larva (10-11 months in freshwater!). 

7. A jungle gym! I personally would have just left the main part of the tree to be a good climbing place for the kids. I even advocated for it and tried to use my kids to advocate for it. But it's not my house. :-) We still enjoyed it while could!

8. Insects! We found rollie pollies, ants carrying large loads, and other decomposers breaking the wood down.

We really did clean up! Honest! We also had lots of fun nature exploration! 

My brother-in-law was there with a chainsaw, my older nephew drove the tractor, the older kids helped some, and a family from church came by to help. Of course, we had to stop and talk to the neighbors to see what all was going on around the area. Even a few days later, I keep seeing more downed trees! 

By the end of the first day, the yard looked miraculously different than when they started that morning. Wow! What a difference! Don't worry, the willow tree will not be leaving us too far. We took some of the "stumps" up to our house (okay, my nephew pulled them in the little trailer) to use for nature play. I'll keep you updated with what we do with them. 

My brother-in-law was there with a chainsaw, my older nephew drove the tractor with trailer, the older kids helped some, and a family from church came by to help. Of course, we had to stop and talk to the neighbors to see what all was going on around the area. Even a few days later, I keep seeing more downed trees! Wonder what else we can explore!

Adventure Path at Wellfield Botanic Gardens

In the springtime, making frequent visits to the same place can give very different results. We were just at Wellfield Botanic Gardens a few weeks ago; however, the difference was huge in how many plants were in bloom and the amount of color in the gardens. As we pulled up, my 5-year-old instantly knew this was the home of the Adventure Garden. "I LOVE the Adventure Garden!" He was excited and ready for some exploring!

Sugar Tapping Day!

Finally! Temps above freezing during the day and below freezing at night!

Here are a few posts I've done about maple tree tapping in the past. There are many community resources on it. Will you try it this year? :-)
Sugar Camp Days at Bendix Woods
Maple Sugaring--this gives more of the basics
Maple Sugaring from InMiddlebury Magazine

This is perfect weather to tap your maple trees! Yesterday was sunny and beautiful. Our son was okay outside without his coat on even. To prep, we washed out our buckets, spiles, and plastic tubing lines, gathered our tools, and refreshed our memory on what angle, drill bit size, etc. we needed. It has been a year since we tapped our trees.  After drilling the hole, we tapped the spile into place with a mallet. I love the tongue sticking off to the side while my son was working hard! Such concentration. He's almost five and very much wants to be involved in cooking, cleaning (maybe not enough!), and working right along us. He's gaining more independence.

While we were working on the buckets, he started playing in the snow and counting. Reminds me of a dice or dominoes. Nature is a perfect place to practice counting! Love that it was completely spontaneous and self-directed.

Then he started making snowballs and patterns in the snow with his tracks. It almost reminds me of a bee dancing in its communication pattern. 

He looked up high in the sky. It was a lot different than what it looked like in the spring, summer, and fall. I look forward to seeing it wake up! He went to a program earlier in the week about seeds. He noted earlier this week there weren't any maple samaras or helicopters out, but when we looked in the tree, we found a few! I actually found a few in the buckets when I was washing them out, too. :-) 

We explored the bark while we were tapping in the spiles, connecting the tubing, and adding our buckets with lids underneath.

The toddler fell forward in the snow and left a great handprint. It was pretty crunchy in this area. He was a little unsure of the snow. 

We even found a bird's nest that fell from one of the maple trees.

Even little guys get interested in natural things like this! Of course drawing in the snow with a stick is fun, too. While we were outside to tap the maple trees, I'm glad we had a little nature exploration as well!