We’ve been to the park to collect autumn resources to explore!
The children had great fun hunting for conkers, acorns and other ‘autumnal’ objects.
Nothing like discovering a conker still in its shell.
They added everything they found to the bag – I did have to have a bit of a sort through when we got home!
K, being totally obsessed with wheels, cars etc did deviate slightly from our autumn explorations and instead decided to problem solve how to get the pushchair out of a hole it has been pushed into!!
He worked on this problem again and again!
When we got home we added our finds to our new mirror. I hoped this would add a new dimension to our explorations. I purposefully limited the amount of objects as I wanted the children to be aware of both their own reflection and that of the objects.
I was surprised by how long this activity held the attention of the little ones. Usually they’ll explore for about 5-10 minutes before losing interested, but this held their attention for much longer.
Another conker to open!
At times, I left them to quietly explore, but also looked for opportunities to introduce the names of objects and descriptive language.
The children were particularly fascinated with fitting the conkers and acorns back in their shells.
Exploring the ‘prickles’ on the conker shell.
I’d also added magnifying glasses to the table so we could have a closer inspection of our finds.
We’re still working on getting the hang on using them though! The children like to hold them really close to their faces which tends to make things a bit blurry!
The autumn objects continued to hold K’s interests, but E has discovered her own reflection!
This led to a game of peek-a-boo!
Later on she explored her reflection in a slightly different way…
….appearing to be trying to work out just where that other E had gone!
Usually within activities I try to look for opportunities to introduce numbers or counting. However, this time I didn’t need to, K instigated this all on his own.
Lining up the acorns and then counting them.
And then getting side-tracked spotting a tiny insect!
I had hoped to do this activity outside and I really like the idea of the sky and trees reflecting in the mirror. I thought it might raise the children’s awareness of their environment. However, it proved to be just too windy and we kept losing all our objects!
At times when I couldn’t fully supervise the children’s play with the mirror, I left a smaller basket of objects out for exploration.
