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NATURE THEME

CRAFTS:

Peanut Puppets
To prepare for this craft, carefully cut off the bottoms of peanut shells and shake the peanuts out. Have extra shells available in case of breakage. Provide the kids with felt-tipped markers, yarn for hair, glue and scissors. Draw faces on the upper part of the shells and glue on hair. Five peanut puppets will fit on each hand — one for each finger. Let the kids make up stories for their puppets.

Make a Leaf Mobile  
Take a leaf walk and collect a variety of colored leaves.  Bring them back to the meeting area and have the children sort them accordingly to size, colors and type.  How the children pick out three favorite leaves.  Press between two pieces of wax paper.  Let each tile cut around their leaves and poke a hole at the top.  Tie a piece of yarn through the hole and tie all three to a floral wire that has been bent.  Each child will then have their own leaf mobile.

Make a Stone Person
The children should work in pairs and collect some rocks and stones to create a stone person, or they can create some animal shapes.  Let the kids use their creativity to decorate their shapes.  Use clay to hold flowers, twigs, nuts, grass or leaves in place.  Let the children make up a riddle about their shape and have the rest of the group tried to guess what it is.

Making Paper
If possible, get some wood pulp.  Otherwise use newspaper.  You will need a fine mash screen 5 x 6.  Paper route all edges with masking tape.  Take a piece of newspaper and shred it very fine and soak it in hot water.  Take enough of this call to form a walnut sized ball.  Put it in a bowl with 1 cup of water in beaded and tell thickness as heavy cream.  Pour into a shallow pan a larger than the screen.  Add one more cup of water and stir again.  Split screen in at an angle and jiggle pan so make sure covers screen.  This screen out and placed on blotter which is on top of heavy newspaper.  Place another blotter on top and fold newspaper over and squeeze the water out.  Take out the blotter Stanley H., but between a dry newspaper and roll all moisture out of with a rolling pin.  Open up, remove blotter and screen, and let paper dry.  This can be rather messy project and could be done as side.

Spool Spiders
Each child will need an empty thread spool, 8 black pipe cleaners, and string. Pull the pipe cleaners through the hole in the spool. Leave the longer length of pipe cleaners on the bottom for legs while bending them over at the top to hold the pipe cleaners in place. Attach a string. Add eyes with a black magic marker.

Wormy Apple Craft 
Cut three apple shapes from folded red construction paper using a pattern, as shown. Place the three apple shapes, one on top of each other, and staple together on the fold line (get a leader or a older child to do the stapling). Make the apple three dimensional by spreading the layers apart. Cut a stalk and leaf from green construction paper and glue to the top of the apple. Cut a small narrow strip of brown paper. Curl one end around a pencil in one direction and the other end in the opposite direction. Draw on eyes and glue the worm sticking out of the apple.

GAMES & ACTIVITIES:

A Rock Walk
Take the children on a walk around the neighborhood to see how many ways you can find rocks and stones being used.  Do they see any chimneys made out of stone or rocks, sidewalks, rock gardens or birdbaths.  Look also for the largest rock.  See if you can find any broken rocks.  Look at the inside of one.  Do they see any layers?  How is it different from the outside?  Do they see any layers?  How is it different from the outside?  Do they see any fossils?  Does the inside feel any different from the outside?

Apple Race
Give each child an apple. Balancing it on their heads, the kids must walk to a line, turn around and walk back. If the apple falls off, the player must go back to the starting line and begin again. By the time the game finishes, the apples will probably be quite bruised. 

Adopt a Rock
Explain meaning of rock, pebble and stone.  Have the kids go outside and find a rock or stone they want to adopt as their own.  One requirement is that they must be able to carry it.  When everyone has a rock, have him or her sit down in a circle.  Have each one describe there is as to color, shape, texture, etc..  See if they think their rock looks like something else.  Ask if their rock can write.  Let them tried on the sidewalk.

Apple Bobbing
Have an apple for each child. Tie strings to the apple stems and hang them from a bar. the kids must keep their hands behind their backs during this game. Because they are blindfolded, another child must direct them to the hanging apples. The child must bite the apple before the leader removes the blindfold. Let the child eat the apple. 

Budding Discoveries
Not for bugs on two legs of different trees and bushes.  Notice the size, color and shape of buds.  Examine the parts of a bud by cutting it open.  Cut some twigs to bring inside.  Include a variety such as pussy willow and flowering trees and shade trees.  You need at least two of each type of twig.  Place twigs and water inside in a warm location.  Let the kids observe the changes they see.  Allow one of each type of twig to remain dry.  How did that twigs in water change?  Compare them to the dry twig.

Colony Mascot
If you have a tree growing outside your meeting area, that the children claim it as their colony mascot.  Or else select a neighborhood tree to adopt.  Take photos other in September and as the seasons change weather bulletin or display.  Notice if their tree might be helping other friends, such as birds, squirrels, etc..

Collect the Nuts
Divide the kids into two lines. In front of each child place a peanut in the shell. The “Collector” has a box or tin to put the nuts into, and stands at the end of the line. The first player picks up the nut in front of him and gives it to the person behind him. The second player takes the nut from the first player, picks up the nut in front of him and passes both to the third player. The third player takes both nuts from the second player, picks up his own nut, and gives all three to the fourth. Play continues all the way down the line, until the last person gives all the peanuts to the “Collector”. The  “Collector” goes to the front of the line and gives all the nuts to the first player. The first player takes one nut, hands the rest to the second player and puts his on the floor in front of him. The nuts pass back down the line until everyone has a nut in front of him once more. What now? EAT!

Crunch Crunch
Go out into the yard or walked to a park and let the children walk through dried leaves.  Have them listen to the sound it makes.  Asked him to pick one up.  What does it feel like?  Asked him to squeeze it.  What happens?  Why?  What some leaves together in a pile.  Let the children jumped in a pile of leaves.  What happens to the leaves?  What did they sound like?  What do they look like?  How are they different from leaves still growing on the tree?

Dark and Light Bark
Get to know trees by their bark.  The kids find a variety of trees by locating different bark covering.  Let them describe each tree by its bark color, bark splits, smell of bark, and feel, such as smooth, rough or bumpy.  Let the kids see how many bark designs and they can collect.  The side of a crayon can be rubbed over a cut open grocery bag or paper placed against a tree.  Exchange routing with a partner who tries to identify tree by partners bark rubbing.  Give other clues about the tree if the rubbing design is not enough.

Exploring Trees Outdoors
Materials:  None
What to Do:  Take the Children into the forest or a well-treed park.  Find as many varieties of trees as you can.  Look at them and talk about the differences in bark, shapes of trunks, and crowns.  Find some leaves on the ground and compare their shapes.  A field book will help you identify leaves and trees.  In the fall you can expand this activity by talking about the fallen leaves.  What happens to them?  If you poke through the leaf litter, you should be able to find leaves in various stages of disintegration.  Talk about how they rot and become part of the soil so that they provide food for trees and other plants.  Explain that the same thing happens to trees when they die.  Perhaps your woods have some fallen trees the Children can look at closely to see what is happening to them and what is growing on them.  Have the Children draw pictures of the trees and come back later in the year to draw the same trees with/without leaves.  You might want to adopt a colony tree and visit it periodically through the year to see it change with the seasons.

Falling Leaves
Beanbags are the “leaves” for this falling leaf catch game. Ask the kids to spread out in the playing area. Start them throwing and catching beanbags by tossing three or more beanbags to various children. Like trees, the kids must stay “rooted” to the spot as they try to catch the beanbags. When all the beanbag “leaves” have fallen, gather them up and play again. 

Forest Relay
Equipment: none
How to Play: Divide the group into teams of four or more and have them line up behind a line. When you yell "GO!", the first player will run a few metres, and stand with arms out, like a tree. The next player then runs around the tree, runs a few metres further, and lies down like a log. The third player runs around the tree, over the log and bends over to make an arch (bridge) a few metres past that. The rest of the players go one by one around the tree, over the log, through the bridge and back to the start line. When they have finished, the bridge, log and tree run back to the finish to join their team. The first team to be sitting down in its line, wins!

Guess that Item
Take small boxes or bags with you on a walk.  Collect natural objects such as bird feathers, twigs, mosques, small rocks, bark, pine cones, evergreens sprigs or pine needles.  Use these items for a variety of games.
A.  The child puts an object in the bag.  Another child puts a hand in the bag to feel the item, describes what it feels like and guess the name of the item.
B.  Blindfold a child.  Rob item against the back of their hand.  How the child gasped by the feel.  But the child smells the item.  Can the child identify?
C.  Child with item in the bag.  Others ask questions about the item.  Questions must be asked before a guess can be made, such as: does this hold seeds?  Is it a pinecone?

How Old Is It?
Go on a walk with the purpose of noticing the variety of trees in the neighborhood.  Look at the different shapes and sizes.  Also notice the differences in the trunk's.  If a tree has been recently cut down, had the children look at it.  Let the children feel it and smell it.  Count the rings to find out the age of the tree.  If unable to locate a stop, obtained across cut slice of a tree for their children to look at, so they may count the rings to determine the age of the tree.

Junk Hunt
Next let the beavers go outside to clean the environment.  Each child can wear gloves and take a container to fill with litter.  Return inside and spread the litter on a large paper.  Glue collected materials to paper and make it join anti-environmental awareness poster for others to see.  Label to tell others where trash was found.  Hang in an entrance way, hallway, library or lunchroom of your meeting area.  Ask the kids: the evening cleaning up is enough?  Will the poster be a strong message to others than just seeing you pick up litter?  How can children keep litter awareness going?  What an aluminum can drive help?

Making A Stone Garden
Make our rock garden from rocks collected on the walk.  Used aluminum pans from frozen foods.  Have the children lay or sand, then Sandy soil and place rocks in an arrangement they like.  But more soil between rocks.  Let the rock show through plant small cacti for a desert garden.  Or use a richer soil and plant manager dish garden plants.  Grass can be sown by it's self.  The children then mow the grass was scissors when the tender shoots get tall and strong.  One rock can be painted to look like a prairie dog, a squirrel, a frog, or other local small animals and placed in the garden as a decoration.

Nature's Nutrition
How the children search for things that can be used such as mulch around young trees and plants.  You might rake up some ways decaying leaves, dried grass or dried pine needles.  Wood chips can also be used.  Asked the children why it is good to put this around plants or young trees.  Help them see that nature is seldom has a way of giving the soil nutrients it needs for its plants and trees.

Plants in Many Places
Tell the children to look for plants growing in unusual places on this walk.  Be sure to take a camera along to take pictures of what they see.  Notice all the places Mosque grows.  Let them feel it.  Asked them to smell it.  See if they know why plants can grow in such particular places.  Let the big children plant some grass seeds on a sponge when they get back to your meeting place.  Have the children take the sponges home and watch to see the grass grow.  Be sure to keep the spongy moist.  Plants do not necessarily need soil to grow.

Sorting Rocks and Stones
The children lay collected rocks and open lead of an egg carton and sort rocks into eight compartments by size, textures, or colors.  Ask questions such asked: how many different colors did you collect?  How are your rocks alike?  Different?  Which is your heaviest rock?  Lightest?  Can you sort by smooth rough?  Flat or around?  How many tiny rocks did you pile in a compartment to be the same size as a larger rock?  Can some of your rocks right on others ?  If you could only keep 10 rocks, which would they be?  Why?

Touch Wood
Play this tag game near wooden fences, benches, trees and picnic tables. All the kids, except the one chosen IT, stand touching something wooden. On a signal, they run from one wooden object to another while IT tries to catch them. If IT tags someone who isn’t touching wood, the two change places.

Take a Rock Hike
go on our rock search and collect rocks.  Before starting out on your rock hunt, give the kids a coffee can to hold their collection.  Walk around building area, and onto nature path.  Explain that stones on driveways may have come a distance from a stone quarry.  Ask the children to select fairly small rocks.  Have them look for a variety of colors, textures and shapes.  If rocks are not available, get pebbles and stones from a gravel or decorative stone business, or asked the children to bring rocks around their homes.  Wash rocks at side and lay on the sidewalk to dry.  Look for differences between wet rocks and dry rocks.  Notice difference in soil washed from rocks.  Do any rocks break when they are washed?

The World under Bark
Locate falling trees; broken branches entries dumb us where there is still bark.  Give each child a spoon and a magnifying glass.  Tell the children to carefully dig under the bark to see what they can find.  Using the magnifying glass for a closer view.  What living things can be found?  Feel the tree under the bark.  Is it smooth?  Can holes be found where the insects have their homes?  Have children tap a living tree with a spoon, like a woodpecker would do when it's feeding.  Look for insects coming at it from under the bark.

Take Root 
Take a fall in, uprooted tree or a tree where there are roots at the surface of the ground.  Examine the roots. Are all the routes the same thickness, length?  Feel the large, main routes and smaller routes. Look for routes still in the ground under fallen trees. how far did the roots go?  Trace their roots growth on a living tree where roots are showing above the ground. Dig up a tiny sampling.  Compare routes to branches.  Look at the color.  Feel the covering and hardness.  Replant the sampling.

SONGS:

Found a Peanut
Found a peanut, found a peanut, found a peanut last night,
Last night I found a peanut, found a peanut last night.
Cracked it open, cracked it open, cracked it open last night,
Last night I cracked it open, cracked it open last night.
It was rotten, etc.
Ate it anyway, etc.
Got a tummy ache, etc.
Called the doctor, etc.
Took some medicine, etc.
Got all better, etc.

Itsy, Bitsy Spider
The itsy, bitsy spider went up the water spout,
Down came the rain and washed the spider out.
Out comes the sun and dries up all the rain,
And the itsy, bitsy spider went up the spout again.
* Try singing this song with actions too.

Johnny Had An Apple Pie
(Tune: The More We Get Together)
Johnny had an apple pie,
An apple pie, an apple pie,
Johnny had an apple pie,
With a green worm on top.
Chorus:
A fuzzy worm, a wuzzy worm,
A great, big, fat, juicy worm.
Oh, Johnny had an apple pie
With a green worm on top.

STORIES:

Three Little Trees
All of us have dreams. Perhaps you dream about becoming a fire fighter, a mountain climber or even a pilot. As the years go by our dreams often change, just as they did long ago for three little trees who dreamt of great things. The trees grew on a quiet hillside forest in a sunny land by the Mediterranean Sea. They talked together about how they would like to be used when someone eventually cut them down. “I’d like to be a cradle for a young baby,” said the first tree. “I would rock him gently and soothe him to sleep. My sides would be very smooth so I would not hurt his tiny hands.”
“I’d like to be part of a great ship sailing the oceans,” said the second tree. “I’d travel around the world, experience all sorts of adventure and provide sailors with a safe place in raging storms.”
“Well I’d like to be something beautiful, something carved with love so that it brings joy and hope to everyone who sees it and fame to the artist who carved it,” said the third tree.
Gently blessed by the sun and refreshed by the rain, the trees grew. Then, over a period of years, a forester came and cut them down, one after the other, to make into useful objects.
The first tree to be cut down went to a carpenter’s shop where he heard he was to become a manger. So much for my dream of becoming a cradle, he moaned. instead of living in a fine house, cattle and donkeys would soon be eating out of me. The second tree to be cut down was very excited when the forester took him to a boat builder. Was his dream coming true? Oh no, he thought when he heard what the carpenter planned. He was going to become a fishing boat. All he could look forward to was having smelly fish tossed into him and the same weary, boring journey every day. Some adventure! The third tree was filled with disgust when, instead of being carved into a thing of great beauty, he was made into a rough wooden cross. And so, the destiny of the trees was not what they’d first imagined. However, much to their surprise, they were soon all delighted because of a unique chance to serve God’s Son. The manger became the cradle for the baby Jesus; the smelly fishing boat carried him as he spoke to the crowds about God; the cross carried his weight on Good Friday. May we also dream dreams, but let’s never miss opportunities that come our way to serve our God.

Johnny Appleseed
This is a true story about a man named John Chapman. He liked the sun, animals and being outside. When he grew up, he decided to live outdoors and do something nice for other people. He began walking through the fields and forest and over the mountains. He wore a pan on his head. As he walked, he talked to the animals of the forest. He also threw apple seeds everywhere he walked. He hoped to toss enough seeds that apple trees would sprout up, so people would enjoy apples everywhere. As a result, people began to call him “Johnny Appleseed”, a name he kept for the rest of his life.
 

FOOD SUGGESTIONS:

Make Apple Sauce
 

TIPS/NOTES: