Painting the Trees and Rolling in the Leaves

This month in our Nature Club, we took some time to notice the changes occurring in nature with the seasons. We started our session with Candy Concentration. Each child was given a jelly bean, and told to find a silent sit spot. They had to sit quietly and observe their surroundings until the bean was dissolved. When the kids returned, they had lots of things they noticed, from woodpeckers pecking far away, to little caterpillars crawling along. We then went for our hike, and noticed that many of the places we had walked last month were now underwater from all the rain.

There is a tree in the woods that is almost totally covered in Christmas Lichen. We've talked before about how it is an indicator species, which tells us something important about the woods. In this case, it can only grow in clean air, so we know we are breathing well. Since the tree is right at the entrance to our forest play area, we decided to give it a name - Ruby.

We wrapped up our session with some wild painting. The kids got to mix their own paint colors from natural dyes - beets, cabbage, turmeric - and then paint whatever they liked. When they finished painting their papers, they decided to decorate the tree trunks with their paint and make a rainbow tree! It was awesome to see them all working together on their painting strategy for covering the most bark.

If you are interested in joining us for Nature Club, we do monthly sessions in batches of 5. We are going to start taking registrations for Fall starting in April, so we hope you will be able to join us!