Autumn Fun!

We began the day with a nature walk.  The mission was to collect small, medium and large acorns, some with caps and some without caps, and yellow, green, brown and red leaves all different shapes and sizes.

We lined up leaves to measure the length of each student.  Then we counted and recorded the data on a white board.  This is a great way to encourage writing names and numbers.

  

We created an actual leave graph, then we estimated which color leaves had the most and least.  We estimated that we had the most brown leaves and the least yellow leaves.  Our estimation was incorrect!  We had 30 red leaves, 22 brown leaves, 10 green leaves and 7 yellow leaves.  We recorded our findings on paper graphs.

Question: Do acorns and acorn caps sink or float in water?  Predictions: 2 acorns will sink and 1 will float, the big acorns will float and the little ones will sink, all acorns will float, all acorns will sink, acorn caps will float.  We discovered that acorns with caps and acorn caps float.  Acorns with out caps sink.

This one floating acorn was the ONLY acorn with out a cap that floated.  The interesting thing, this student predicted that 2 of his acorns would sink and 1 would float:)

 
The following day we predicted if a walnut would sink or float water.  We predicted that the walnuts would sink.  We discovered that the dry walnuts floated, however, after the walnuts absorbed the water, the walnuts sank to the bottom of the cup.

On the nature walk we each found 3 - 5 very special leaves to paint.  We layed the leaves on wax paper then squirted glue, shaving cream and paint on the leaves, then used q-tips to swirl the ingredients to create beautiful leaves to decorate the class room.

We painted with acorns.  We placed paper inside a container, added 3 acorns, squirted paint on the acorns and paper.  Next, secured the lid on the container and went banana's as we shook the container rapidly.  We opened the container to view the creations.  Finally, we glued the acorns on the papers.  Fun! Fun! Fun!