Nuts!

Acorn collecting starts long before autumn at our house.  As soon as those little nuggets hit the ground, they're in the kids' pockets/buckets/stroller.  The two of them have been scouring the ground for "the best ones" for well over a week now.  Between this and the recent obsession with building fairy houses, nature walks have become gathering sessions of huge porportions.  We don't leave the house without their little tin pails.  Actually, we have moved on to the big tin pails now that the children have decided the little ones no longer suffice.  Our nature table is quite literally overflowing with chestnuts, maple seed pods, choke-cherries/crab apples (which have all been meticulously polished by little hands to emphasize the shiny-red-goodness), and of course, acorns, with our without their caps.

Since we are in the middle of a ridiculous heatwave, we went out early in the morning for our walk/collecting session.  When we got back we hunkered down on the kitchen floor and made some felted acorns.  I had a huge bag of leftover wool stuffing from the last Waldorf doll I made, and numerous small bags of colored roving left over from when I actually had time to make fairies ala Wee Folk.  The kids thought this would be a fabulous project, and it actually was.  F couldn't get enough of the warm soapy water, and S thought that it was great fun to watch her puffy ball of wool transform in her hands to a firm little acorn.  They lasted about 45 minutes before we decided to call it quits, at which point our fingers were all significantly pruny.

We don't officially start homeschool until the day after Labor Day, and I had been hoping to save this project for during school time.  But it seemed to be the right time today.  And it's always good to repeat activities, especially ones that are so engaging.  And besides, we need something to do with all those empty acorn caps that keep showing up...

F and S rolling their wool

The felted balls and F's felted "banana"

finished acorns ready for the nature table