September Nature Table

Toadstools, toadstools

Beneath the trees

Turn your painted caps to me

My tower is tall

But still I see

Toadstools, toadstools

Beneath the trees.

~borrowed from Live Ed.

September is here, finally!  I am not a fan of summer and hot weather, so I always anxious to get going with Autumn.  And although the Autumn Equinox is not until the 21st, it is starting to feel fall-ish already.  Cooler, drier weather is settling in along with much cooler nights, perfect for snuggling under flannel sheets and puffy blankets.

Nature walks inevitably end with pockets full of treasures gleaned from the forest floor.  Mushrooms, seed pods of infinite varieties, and pretty leaves are always plentiful and bright with warm Autumn colors.

Our last walk yeilded an astounding variety of colorful mushrooms that, while not edible, were irresistable for collecting for our nature table.  It was also time to prune our little espaliered apple trees, so we had lots of leafy branches for our Apple Blossom Fairy to sit upon.

A word to the wise though!  Make sure to keep mushrooms out of reach of small children and animals.  Also, they only keep about a day or so indoors, so discard them once they begin to rot.  Otherwise you'll have a soggy mess, and possibly uninvited guests, such as worms or bugs that were on the mushrooms.  We found an army of little white worms that must have hatched from eggs laid on one of our mushrooms.  It was....umm....interesting.  Gross....but interesting.



Our September Nature Table



Our felted acorns on the top tier.
We made these last year, but will
be making more soon.



Our Apple Blossom Fairy in her little
nest of apple branches.  (We recycled her
from our May nature table!)



The gnome in his garden.  So many colorful
mushrooms!  I've never seen such a bright
purple one before!


For those of you who have never felted acorns before, here's the link to a nice little tutorial. 



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