Leaves, Sticks, and Acorn Tops

When you're outside playing with the kids, do you ever notice fun- looking fallen leaves? Do your children enjoy collecting them? Mine do.

One time when we visited a park, I noticed when a mother asking her child to stop picking up leaves. The child was picking up pine needles and making them into brooms, then picking up oak leaves and tracing the edges with their fingertips. The mother just called these natural materials dirty, and swept them out of the child's hands. Out of respect for the other mother, I encouraged my children to play with the child on the play equipment. They went down the slides and played on the swings. Once the other family left, we went right back to picking up leaves and sticks and making our little creations.

This experience made me wonder just how many parents look at leaves as simply debris, something to be discarded, and nothing more.

This simple interaction motivated me to write a blog post about some of the the fun things that you can do with natural playthings like leaves, sticks, and acorn tops. I hope you enjoy!


One day when we were enjoying a community pool, we noticed that there were a lot of leaves in the water. My 3 year old made it her mission to pick out every single leaf from that pool and bring it to me. I took her little treasures and arranged them into this fun design. Then we had a little math lesson, counting the leaves and sorting them into this triangle shape. They were captivated by how the lines became shorter as each row had one less leaf.
This is similar to an activity that we do with strings of beads. Here's a video of our bead activity. 



If counting is too tricky, it's also very fun to collect an armful of leaves, then sort them by size. Here we sorted a big batch of fallen oak leaves from smallest to largest. Later, we got out our crayons, put our leaves under a piece of paper, and made leaf rubbings! Just rub, rub, rub with the crayon until you see the outline of the leaf margins and its beautiful venation pattern.
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Does your child ever bring you piles of sticks? These always pop up everywhere, and they always want to bring them home. We have started a rule of leaving them behind wherever we find them. Sticks are great fun to hold and to build with. If they're straight, you can turn them into log houses. If they're curvy, you can make them into letters. And if your child is really interested in numbers, you can use them to count. You can use them to cover the concepts of addition, subtraction, and even multiplication.
Here is a video of multiplication using this stick method. In this video we used colored pencils, but you can do it with anything that is long and somewhat cylindrical in shape. 



Acorn tops are a lot of fun, too! These textured little blobs of brown seem to be everywhere we go this year, from California to Texas. I guess there was a big crop in the Western United States, with many different species of Quercus, too.

 My 3 year old likes putting acorn tops on sticks and turning them into people. But my 5 year old likes organizing them by size and counting them out. One day when she was arranging them into little rows I turned it into a math lesson.
We practiced counting by 5's. "Five, Ten, Fifteen, Twenty, Twenty-Five, Thirty, Thirty-Five, Forty..." Then we learned to divide.

Here is a video of this activity.

I hope that this motivates other parents to step a little bit outside of their comfort zone to see just how useful and fun these found materials can become.With nature on your mind, you can find tools for learning wherever you go. And if your kids see you using found materials creatively, they will, too.

Other Resources 
If you liked this post, you may also enjoy this post about outdoor math from The Barefoot Homeschooling Mom. She calls this post Backyard Math, and she walks you through how to sub items found in nature for math manipulatives:

Do you want an art activity to go along with this? Our friends at Kitchen Table Classroom have some fun ideas for Nature Collages. Check it out!

Do you want a bunch of excellent lesson ideas for Nature Study? Our friend Jen at Practical, By Default has compiled 30 great ideas here!

Outdoor Collecting 
I loved this post on Facebook by Little Wise Owls Child Minding. 
Click here to read the full post on Facebook. Facebook

Displaying Nature
Here's a great idea from Little Pine Learners.
This would be fun for the kids to make themselves and showcase their nature art - including sculptures! We could have ben leave it outside on a covered patio. The cardboard wouldn't last as long outdoors, but art doesn't need to be permanent.

How can you get creative while learning today?

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