Fun with Pastels

Can you believe how quickly this season is passing? I've been trying to soak it in especially now that the sun is out more often than not lately. We've had a lot of gray and rain this autumn. In October we took some time to enjoy a chalk pastel project. Tricia over at Hodgepodge has a wonderful set of tutorials. I posted on the Blog, She Wrote facebook page about Tricia's free chalk pastel tutorials, but I wanted to be sure and share here on the blog as well.

One of our favorites from last year was the Apple or Pumpkin lesson. Since ours were still packed away and we wanted to decorate for the season, we made some more! And we tried the fall leaves.

The kids all tried several apples & pumpkins- a few tried leaves. Even E14, who doesn't particularly enjoy flexing his artistic muscles, enjoys chalk pastels.

R12 started making her own designs. She really lights up when I pull out the pastels.

Pastels are so fun to use and so forgiving! Next, I want to share what we did with some of these after we finished making them. The results were splendid so stay tuned!

Leaf Prints

Remember when I mentioned we'd do some leaf prints? I found the directions and inspiration at the Handbook of Nature Study blog. If you don't follow that blog, I highly recommend it. Barb is just really good at being consistent with her nature studies and sharing them with us.

We are ready to go!

I7 did a nice job of getting some clear images.

I liked working with inks instead of paints. It's too easy to use too much paint and not see any prints- just blobs.

R9 decided to try something different and use the leaf as a stencil. How clever is that?

We really liked that you could more clearly see the outline of the leaf.

Now that's a RED oak! We picked this leaf up down at the school yard last weekend while we visited the playground. Oddly enough, there are no oak trees right nearby to us. We were glad to find some a quarter mile away at the school.

R9 tried another something special.

This time she used the inked up side of the leaf down toward the paper and did the stenciling again. So, this is cool because you get the clear outline and some patterning of the real leaf where it was pressed down upon with the ink pad.

I had to try using a leaf as a stencil too. Pretty cool.

I7's finished product. We put them in our nature journals and make some extra free prints for decorations.

Just the latter half of this week it has turned to a real November looking sky and tree line. Mostly brown leaves are left...with a few bright spots of yellow, but for the most part the trees are now bare.

Some of you may be in the prime of your leaf collecting autumn. I encourage you to get outdoors and collect some leaves. We collected these and then headed outside to do our stamping.

Autumn Resources

Some of my kind readers have been asking for a book list so I thought it was time to publish it. I will start with my fall book list and then do one for the Underground Railroad/Civil War.

Our favorite autumn books:

• Pumpkin Jack by Will Hubbel- there is a unit at Homeschool Share on this one which is a lot of fun!
  
• Too Many Pumpkins by Linda White
  
• How to Make and Apple Pie and See the World by Marjorie Priceman- which is featured in a Reading Rainbow episode available on Netflix and at the library
• Pumpkin, Pumpkin by Jeanne Titherington
  
• It's Pumpkin Time by Zoe Hall
  
• How Do Apples Grow by Betsy Maestro
  
• From Seed to Pumpkin by Wendy Pfeffer
  
• The Pumpkin book by Gail Gibbons
• Poppleton in Fall by Cynthia Rylant
• Why Do Leaves Change Color? by Betsy Maestro
• Fresh Fall Leaves by Betsy Franco
• The Wild Leaf Ride by Judith Stamper
• Clifford's First Autumn by Norman Bridwell
• Halloween Mazes
  

We read these a lot especially with the younger ones. The older ones enjoy our fall crafting and preparations. We've been to the cider mill, today we are going to the pumpkin patch and we'll be making applesauce next weekend- a day long affair at our house!

Enjoy the season!

Nature Study- Fall

Making leaf prints with ink- at The Handbook of Nature Study blog. Barb does a fantastic job of sharing her family's nature studies with us and her sidebar is just chock full of challenges for your family. I so enjoy her approach to nature study and enjoy it with my kids as often as I can remember!


Outdoor Hour Challenges- Fall Series This is a great place to see all the autumn Outdoor Hour Challenges in one place with some additional information. Barb based her whole blog and her challenges on the book below. If you are unfamiliar with it, it's the Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Comstock.

Crop Plants Pumpkin Time- a study of pumpkins by making a pumpkin pie! I'm excited to use our very own pumpkin patch for this purpose.

FIAR Nature Study Series- the fall study is my very favorite! Jane Claire Lambert pulls out all the stops on this study which incorporates nature with art, poetry, science, and music. I love pulling this out each year.


I helped the kids collect some leaves last week after a beautiful sunny afternoon at the orchard. The plan is to use some of the leaves for the inking project and the others for a different project.

We just finished adding our garden pictures to our nature journals the other day- sort of a visual recording of how garden grew this season. It's time to harvest our pumpkins. We had a heavy frost the other day and woke up to 2 inches of snow this morning! The plants are no longer alive so the pumpkins will be moved and hopefully we'll see them turn orange by Halloween.

There are plenty of autumn activities out here in the internet world. Next, I'll give some resources for apple themed lessons and fall book choices.

Adjectives for Fall

I-5 and R7 worked on describing fall on some leaves last week. We talked about how words that describe are called adjectives and we named a few. Red, cold, orange, and gray sky are some of the words they chose.

We decided to put them up outside the "castle". About four years ago or so now we made this castle out of a sturdy box some of the equipment in Dan's lab came in. We'd been reading Henry and Mudge and the Long Weekend by Cynthia Rylant. In it Henry and his dog are super bored until his mom suggest making a castle out of their refrigerator box. Since then it has become a great fort, reading corner, play house and R7 has taken to decorating it with her art work on the inside. It's very cute and I can hardly believe we've had a huge box in here that long!

R7's Autumn Poetry

Well my goodness! One lesson on poetry and R7 is singing the praises of the season which she loves. Between this and the art she is in love with I think we have a true blue artsy girl on our hands!! I found her with her notebook in hand this morning just writing away!

Enjoy!

Fall is Leaves

Fall is beauty

Fall is colored

Fall is leaves

Fall is cold

Fall is raking

Fall is fun

Fall is Fall!

Fall

Fall Fall Fall

Getting colder

Going to winter

Soon leaves falling

Colors going crazy

Falling

Falling Falling

Falling leaves

You’re just in time

Halloween is coming

Cold is coming

Winter is coming

Halloween

Halloween

Halloween

Halloween is coming

Bats, pumpkins, jack o’ lanterns

Glowing in the night

Mini Fall Unit- Leaves and Pumpkins

This week we were slated to study Pumpkin Runner by Marsha Arnold, but it did not come in time by ILL. After ordering a bunch of the next books in line for our studies, I decided that I wasn't prepared to move on from that fall focus. So, I declared this week a study of fall and leaves and pumpkins. Hopefully next week we'll continue on with Pumpkin Runner (either because the ILL comes through or it will be in at Borders where I just ordered it) which is set in Australia and will give us a unique opportunity to talk about weather in the southern vs northern hemispheres.

Activities on Deck for This Week!

Leaf graph- collect and graph the colors we find (though this may end up being a poll considering it's been so wet!)

Fall Poetry- we'll talk about what makes a poem and read two. They'll even try to write one about fall

Adjectives- We made a list of words describing fall and defined what an adjective is. I gave them leaves to record the words on. I will cut them about and put them up. Stay tuned for a picture of our adjective leaf collage!

Weather- discuss changes in the weather for fall and continue on with our weather calendar. We'll be checking temperature daily and repositioning our rain guage out on the mailbox! We'll note the first frost.

What do the changes in weather mean for the plants and animals? Which animals hibernate? Migrate? Forage?

Draw Write Now- lesson pumpkin drawing

Pumpkins- measure the circumference of our pumpkins (We have five- four collected back at hayride time and one bought today with our applesauce apples- the big one), observe other differences, measure weight (if possible on our bathroom scale)

The kids will use a sharpie to draw on their pumpkins or they'll have the choice to decoupage their pumpkin with red/orange/yellow/brown tissue paper for an indoor centerpiece. The big one we'll carve this weekend.

Complete a pumpkin book from Enchanted Learning along with other puzzles and coloring related to our theme.

Resources

Fall by Jane Claire Lambert FIAR digital

Homeschool Share - Pumpkin Jack

Enchanted Learning

Evan Moor Teacher Filebox

Bingo Game Maker - fall

Fall Unit Page

Books

Pumpkin Jack by Will Hubbell

Too Many Pumpkins by Linda White

Winter Days in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder

It's Pumpkin Time by Zoe Hall

The Pumpkin Book by Gail Gibbons

From Seed to Pumpkin by Wendy Pfeffer

The Pumpkin Patch by Elizabeth King

Ranger Rick - October

Your Big Backyard- October

Wild Animal Baby - October

Busy Chipmunk by Kirsten Hall

Scholastic's Pipsqueak's Maze Halloween- a book of beginner mazes

Magic School Bus - The Wild Leaf Ride - Level 2 reader

If You Give a Moose a Muffin by Laura Numeroff

Poppleton in Fall by Cynthia Rylant

Clifford's First Autumn by Norman Bridwell

Why do the Leaves Change Color by Betsy Maestro

A Day at the Apple Orchard by Megan Faulkner and Adam Krawesky

How do Apples Grow by Betsy Maestro

Animals in Winter by Henrietta Bancroft and Richard Van Gelden

How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World!

This week we began our journey around the world to make an apple pie! A perennial favorite we last rowed this when R7 was in kindergarten. This humorous story involves a little girl traveling the world to get the items she needs for her pie because the "market is closed".

The list of go alongs which we began enjoying last night before bed include the following:

How Do Apples Grow by Betsy Maestro

Cilfford's First Autumn by Norman Bridwell

When Autumn Comes by Robert Maasse

A Day at the Apple Orchard by Megan Faulkner

Autumn: Discovering the Seasons by Louis Santrey

Poppleton in the Fall by Cynthia Rylant

It's Fall by Linda Glaser

Magic School Bus reader The Wild Leaf Ride by Judith Stamper

Why Do Leaves Change Color? by Betsy Maestro

In the Woods: Who's Been Here? by Lindsay Barrett George

We started off with a bang yesterday when we visited a local farm to take a hayride and enjoy some fresh apples from the orchard. the unseasonably warm, unstable weather mean we could not finish picking and we'll have to go back for more apples and our big pumpkin. We did enjoy the ride out to the pumpkin patch to pick out our small pumpkins. I-5 really insisted on leaving and since you can't easily pick lots of apples with a fussing, very persistent child we left after purchasing a few. Just after we arrived home the sky opened up and we got hammered. Thank heavens he was insistent or I bet we'd have been caught in the orchard in the pouring rain and lightening!