Hunting and Sorting for Autumn

If you remember that at the end of the summer holidays I promised that I would spend more time in allowing the boys to be out in nature exploring and be wild and free more. With this in mind I decided to do exactly that and plan some of this into our learning.

I decided that to be able to do this more that I can craft several lessons around autumn.

Earlier this week there was some minor change around due to James being poorly where the temperature change was affecting his asthma. This meant that William and I had extended one to one day hunting and collecting autumnal nature objects.

This activity had no real objectives other than to recognise something of nature that we only really find in autumn. (We did have a chat on the way to discuss the different things we might find)

In general we were looking for objects to collect and observe at home but on the way William spotted this fungi growing from the tree. We did discuss that these can grow all year round and although some of these looking fungi are edible that I wasn’t sure so therefore we wouldn’t try but I thought it was a nice find.

With all our nature objects collected and James returned it was time to look at our knowledge and understanding of what we’ve found.

I wanted them to use the table to arrange these items but it you have a larger outside it would be good to create a grid or segmented circle for the items to be arranged in.

I asked that everything we found needed to be grouped together and there needed to be reasons and not because they were “conkers” or “leaves”. I wanted the boys to have time to discuss the different objects and what makes them unique.

So how did the boys sort them?

Pine Cones

They grouped these together because some of the other objects were hard and solid but these were open. They thought that they were still hard but you can still break them where with the conkers and acorns you couldn’t.

Acorn Caps

The boys said that these were small, hard and bumpy. They were different because they were a part of another object but weren’t joined to them.

I have no idea what these are? 

The boys said that these are different as they have 2 parts. The bottom was small, hard and round like a ball. They were attached to leaves were none of the others were and all of the leaves are the same colour.

Sycamore Helicopters

They both decided that they were different because they could either be together as well as apart and the others are usually joined by something else like a twig or "branch" (stem). They felt that they were a mix of the others where they were both leaf and seed or in their words "they are a leaf and a nut"

Feathers

Okay, we can find feathers all year round but I did think that they added an extra depth into the investigation.

The boys said these were different because they came from animals where the others came from trees. They were also the softest of all the objects.

Leaves

The boys said these were the only thing that had lots of different colours. They said that they were hard because they were all different where the others were very similar and this made it hard.

Conkers 1

These were round, hard and had a circle that was a different colour and they were shiny were the others looked "muddy". The were different shapes but all very similar.

Conkers 2  

The boys said that these were round and hard like conkers but were unique because they had conkers inside them. They were different sizes and different colours. The most important thing they observed is that they were spikey and could hurt where none of the others were.

This was a great 2 part activity that both the boys and I enjoyed doing!

The freedom to explore and investigate and have a change of scenery is great and it was a good way to prepare for the next lesson.

I think the boys were great at sorting the different objects and found some great describing words that distinguished each of them uniquely. This opens up to a few other activities like poetry, stories, art and crafts so definitely watch this space on how this is expanded!

Would you give this a try?