I Heart Fall @Nelson Academy

Fall is my absolute favorite season.  The weather here in Hotlanta is finally cooling down.  Today was Friday, which is always a little more laid back than the rest of the week.  We finished up the necessities and headed outside on the front porch.  We brought out a little kid's table from the basement, our Handbook of Nature Study, magnifying glass, oil pastels, nature notebooks, and of course the girls brought their dolls and stuffed animals.     

We gathered some leaves from trees in our yard to color, and are in the process of choosing which tree we are each going to watch throughout the seasons.  We keep getting distracted and haven't actually chosen one yet.  We found one leaf with an insect's shedded skin on it.  It was like a little white skeleton.  We are going to take it the Nature Exchange at our Nature Center.  The kids earn points when they bring in things like this, and they use the points to buy other stuff, like rocks, shells, or animal teeth.   

We did our coloring with oil pastels.  It's the first time we used them.  I think regular crayons would have worked better for coloring leaves, but they will be great for other drawings.  The color shows up really well.  This is a kids' set I got from Dick Blick.  

You can see the three trees right in front of our house.  Two are pines, and I think the other is a white or live oak.  While the girls went off and played, I sat and sketched my front yard.  I wanted to write out the names of each tree for future reference and include a picture of their leaves.  The girls saw me doing that in my own nature journal, and then wanted to come back and draw some more on their own.  I love that!  I love doing things in my nature journal, but I so easily get caught up in just doing things to prepare them to do an activity that I often don't take time to do it myself, even though I enjoy it.  I realized again today, though, that the best way to get my kids interested in nature study is to be interested in it myself.  And I am!  I will admit I'm a little intimidated because I grew up knowing so little about nature (hence not knowing what trees are in my front yard...).  I was outside all the time, though, and I loved it!  Now I get to share that love with them, and they get to learn while they are at it.


We used our field guide for trees to figure out which leaf went with each tree.  Evie traced her leaves and colored them.  Kylie just drew hers.  I laid a page on top of my leaf and shaded it.  As I said, I would suggest crayons for this in the future.

It was a fun day had by all.  One of those days I am really grateful we get to do this homeschool thing!