Autumn Beginings

We are most certainly well into Autumn, the weather is getting colder, the leaves are beginning to turn and I'm starting to get my hibernation feeling! Not that I want to hide away from the world, but I do want to be curled up in a blanket with a book or some knitting in front of a fire....shame we don't have a fire!

This morning we got out of the house for a nature walk! We went looking for those tell tale signs of the change of seasons

Beautiful red and orange leaves

Also took this last chance to get some blackberries before Michaelmas and began collecting some bits for our Autumn Nature Table!

Not many leaves have fallen yet so we didn't get as much for the Nature Table as I would have liked but we did add a bit to our already HUGE conker collection and found a bit of a branch.

It was a lovely morning out in nature, letting the dog have a run around and snacking on some wild blackberries, Little 'A' however slept through the whole walk so I enjoyed it by myself!!

Back home after Little 'A' woke up and had some lunch we sat down to read some nice stories we got from the library earlier in the week. We read 'Knight School' by Jane Clarke (also linking in nicely with Michaelmas next week) and 'Sometimes I like to Curl up in a Ball' by Vicki Churchill. Two lovely stories with a bit of an Autumn theme.

Although Little 'A' is now only 15 months he loves to sit and look at some longer books aimed at older children. He listens to the rhymes in the stories and points to the pictures of things he recognises often with a sound and an accompanying baby sign!

Shame I didn't get any pictures but next up we played with a sheet of bubble wrap. Little 'A' already has a good pinching grip but I thought we could work on improving his strength, and what can be more fun than bubble wrap! We started with some pinching and one fingered pushing, Little 'A' has worked out he can pop the bubbles by scratching with his nail too. He then went and got a building block and started hitting the bubbles with that but soon found it didn't really work, so he stood on them, lay down on them and then started grabbing the sheet in a grasp and squeezing a handful at a time. All wonderful fine motor practice and just plain good fun, I got some huge smiles with each 'pop'!!

Next we grabbed some paint!

Over the last couple of weeks Little 'A' has started displaying some ability to use tools for a purpose, connecting his movement to the parks they leave, so we'll be building on this over the coming months.

We painted some toilet rolls...

...and took some hand and arm prints. These have been left to dry and will need to be finished next week now...can you guess what they will be yet??

After all that excitement Little 'A' went off for another sleep, he's been quite tired the last couple of days, there was just enough time for a bit of diner before Little 'A' went home for the weekend.

So that was our first fun week of Autumn!