Autumn Treasures Part 2

It has only been a few days since I wrote part 1 of Autumn Treasures but we have done so much in that time!  One of the activites we did on Friday that I didn't write about was a watercolor lesson. I purchased some Prang waterpaints at Staples and a couple of Rose Art trays as well.  I didn't want to spend over $5 each on Prang but you can tell the difference between the two when using them so I should make an effort to make sure they each get their own set of Prang watercolors. (though at this stage I'm not sure the younger ones really care.)  They all LOVED painting and keep asking to do it again.

Emma, Jenna, Ellie and Connor learning about watercolors

On Saturday, we visited a local pumpkin farm for their annual fall festival.  There was so much to do as you'll see in the pictures.  Before we left for the farm, I filled the crockpot with apples, sugar and spices and later in the day we had some nice homemade applesauce.  I used this recipe.

preparing the apples for the applesauce

applesauce before cooking...I sliced the apples with a mandoline

Connor, Emma and Ellie sharing a warm blanket on a chilly morning

Just before entering the corn maze

Ready to pick our pumpkins at the pumpkin patch.

lots of very interesting pumpkins and gourds for sale

potato digger

Ellie picking potatoes

Emma, Jenna, Ryan and others picking potatoes.  The machine
dug them up and the kids watching helped by putting them in the baskets.
They each got to bring home a potato for their work.

loading the pumpkins on the scale

weighing the pumpkins

apple cider pressing

This made drilled holes in this rock.  Then pounded wedges in
and eventually removed that rock from the ground.

Katie helping Connor learn to spin wool.

Katie getting her own spinning lesson.

face painting

Connor as a cat.

Ellie's turn

Jenna in the play area digging potatoes.

The applesauce all done when we got home!

I also made the girls some quick nature journals that I think are just so cute.  I didn't make a cover but I did use the back of the watercolor pad I bought (very heavy cardboard) to make the back and then I used index cards for the paper.  Lines on one side if you want to write and plain on the other side for drawing.  I also included watercolor paper cut to the same size as the cards and then clipped them with one binder clip.  We took them on our nature walk on Wednesday.  Except for a broken pencil lead the girls seemed to enjoy them.

Emma with her nature journal

Jenna drawing in her journal

In addition to Autumn Treasures, I also used a few other resources that I just love and wanted to quickly mention.  The first is a book I have had for many years.  It is Considering God's Creation.  I have never really used this as a full science course but use the worksheets to supplement whatever other science curriculum we are using.  We also used some worksheets from the Giant Science Resource book.  This is a great book for elementary science worksheets.  Both books are reproducible for your own family.  Finally, I ordered Jane Lambert's (Five in a Row) Fall Nature Study guide.  I didn't  need to use anything to supplement but in the case of the first two books I had just happened to see some worksheets that I thought would go along nicely and the nature study book was something that I wanted to take a look at and figured it was a good time to try it out.

All in all, this really was one of my favorite units.  The kids really love the nature walks so we plan to continue that....we also will continue to observe the changes that fall brings now that it is actually here!

Originally this was the end of the post but I had forgotten a couple of pictures I wanted to add.  I put them in another post but decided I'd rather move them here.

Emma wanted to make her own cover.
We ironed leaves between sheets of waxed paper.

I stapled this week's words to ribbons rather
than having them add them to their lapbooks.