Friday, October 9, 2009

A Nature Walk

The morning air is crisp and invigorating, so Julia and I decided to take a Nature Walk this morning. I get this teaching tip from one of my favorite fictional teachers, Miss Read. And autumn is the perfect time for a walk outdoors!

We were amazed at all we found. The leaves here have only just begun to turn, and to our surprise, we found MANY colorful leaves. Here Julia shows off one of our best, a large Magnolia. The ziploc bag was her repository for all our treasures.
When we returned home, I asked her to sort the leaves onto one baking sheet, and everything else onto another. I wish I had a nature table, or even better, a shadow box, to display them, but I don't. We took the leaves downstairs to begin sealing them in 2 layers of waxed paper. But guess what? It didn't work! I ironed and ironed, and I could NOT get the paper to melt at ALL! Have they changed the formulation for waxed paper? I don't know, but we were sorely disappointed. I did manage to burn a few leaves to brown, in my zeal. We'll try again later, more slowly, and see if that works better.
Here are all the finds, sans leaves. Notice the mushrooms, the neat cones, the berries from a crepe myrtle, the Magnolia pod. We had so much fun. We also observed the new, fresh green grown on the hemlocks, and on the ivy, giving it a two-tone coloration. It was a very successful Nature Walk. We'll be doing this again in a few weeks, when the leaves are a riot of color.

2 comments:

Carolyn said...

I couldn't get the ironing wax paper thing to work last year, either. We ended up pressing our leaves in the phonebook.

GretchenJoanna said...

I think that yes, waxed paper has much less wax on it nowadays. This is a serious problem!