All about Autumn - crunchy leaves, Easter eggs & cooler days

March in South Africa is when we start to welcome in the (slightly) cooler mornings that lead to Autumn. It’s also when the Cosmos is in full flower, and my own children know that that means the Easter Bunny will be here soon! We’ve got some lovely trees that change colour right by our school, and so I took the kids out eagerly start collecting crunchy leaves to play with. I also pulled out the craft goodies (along with ALL the beans that the kiddies love to collect from the Food Forest) and I let the kids go wild gluing and decorating their gorgeous leaf collection. I also collected some of the blooms in my garden for a frozen egg activity that my own 3 kiddies loved doing when they were smaller.

I also wanted to make a nice Autumnal ‘gallery’ type wall of all their crafts over the weeks so we set out to decorate some big sheets of newsprint paper. During one of our snack times I read everyone a sweet little book on the changing seasons so I could elicit some of the important vocabulary (and also to bring attention to the colours that usually accompany this season). We did some marble painting (this was my first time trying out this activity and I used a large flattish box with the paper sort of folded to fit…but I’ve since found some great plastic trays that work far better…click here for a full explanation in another post).

Another REALLY fun activity is shadow play with an overhead projector. I love seeing how this draws in different children, and if you set it up for a nice chunk of time and leave it (safetly) to be played with and explored by the kids, you will be rewarded with wonderful creative stories as they play with different objects and textures to see what sort of shadow they produce on the walls. In the Reggio Emilia approach (which is what my school is modeled on), light and shadow play is a powerful tool for exploration and learning. There are so many deeper connections and moments of learning that take place in the seemingly simple tasks that happen during ‘free’ play, and this is why I love the Reggio approach so much. Here is some more insight into all that is actually going on in the child’s mind when they are engaging with light and shadows:

Playing with light and shadows is considered a powerful learning experience that nurtures creativity, exploration, and critical thinking. Here are the key benefits:

1. Stimulates Curiosity and Inquiry: Light and shadow play encourages children to ask questions, make predictions, and explore cause-and-effect relationships—central to the Reggio emphasis on inquiry-based learning.

2. Supports Sensory and Cognitive Development: Engaging with light and shadow enhances visual perception, spatial awareness, and an understanding of abstract concepts such as transparency, reflection, and transformation.

3. Encourages Creative Expression: Children use light and shadow as expressive mediums, often integrating storytelling, dramatic play, or visual arts. This aligns with the Reggio principle of “the hundred languages of children,” which values diverse forms of expression.

4. Promotes Collaborative Learning: Activities with overhead projectors, torches, or natural light often invite group interaction, fostering communication, cooperation, and shared problem-solving.

5. Connects to Nature and Environment: Reggio Emilia values the learning environment as the “third teacher.” Playing with natural light helps children become more attuned to their surroundings and seasonal changes.

6. Integrates Multiple Domains of Learning: Light and shadow experiences touch on science (physics of light), math (shapes, sizes, symmetry), literacy (storytelling through shadow puppets), and art (shadow tracing or installation work) Prodigy Early Learning

For the Frozen Flower Egg activity, all you need are some (mostly intact) eggs shells and little flowers, petals and leaves. Simply fill up the egg shells with your pretty floral things and then fill them up with water and place in the freezer overnight. I gave each child an egg box and 6 eggs to fill. I loved watching some of them really engage with this activity and get really creative with what and how they placed their petals and leaves inside the eggs, and other who really just wanted to get it over and done with and go and run around outside.

Once removed from the freezer, simply let the children go wild in smashing, peeling & breaking their creations. We had some really hot mornings, so this was the perfect activity to cool off in the garden.

And keeping with the egg theme (my family eats a lot of eggs!) the next egg-cellent activity is one that is always a hit…especially with the boys. Egg smashing! I wanted to dye the shells and use them for a Easter themed craft, but first, I needed them smashed up. I like to (try!) keep the shells contained in a tray of some kind, that can withstand some good smacks. I have little plastic and wooden hammers, but what actually works the best is a potato smasher/the food utensil you use to mash up veggies. I only have one of these so the kids also get a good chance to practice their sharing. The whole activity is a great sensory one, and even the most reluctant of little hands usually gets stuck in.

Once you have your smashed up egg shells, it’s time to have fun with adding colour to them. This is a nice way to practice colours too (click here for more rainbow themed ideas for teaching colours). I used glass jars to add food colouring and water and then left the colours to soak in over night. Then I drained the water out (the kids used this coloured water to play with afterwards) and then put the coloured shells onto paper towel to dry out and ‘set’ the colours.

As Easter was right around the corner, I created some bunny and Easter eggs shapes our of glue on cardboard, and then let the kids decorate their chosen design with the eggs shells. They turned out far better than I expected and made very sweet classroom decor in the week leading up to the Easter holidays.

I had also prepped a stash of water beads (nightmare things they go EVERYWHERE but they kids always have so much fun playing and squishing them) and some plastic eggs I found at the Crazy Store.

The Easter Bunny also appeared one morning and the kids loved looking for the eggs he stashed around the school.

Overall, it was a wonderful couple of weeks filled with lots of sensory play, adventures in the garden and lots of creative colourful fun.

Click below to see more teaching inspired lessons from The Red Shed:

All About Caterpillars, Clouds & the letter C

These posts document my teaching adventures in starting up a Reggio-inspired school in my farm shed in January 2023. I’ll share more about how all this came about soon, but in the mean time, I hope you enjoy these moments & learnings.

It was that time of the year when the silk worms start making their appearance (although they are NOT indigenous to South Africa…there is generally someone somewhere who has found/bought/hatched themselves some) and that’s exactly what happened for us. One of the Granny’s of my kiddies asked if we wanted any, and I thought they would work perfectly for us to learn about caterpillars (and other ‘c’ or Clever Cat things like clouds). And for those asking if silk worms are actually caterpillars? Yes, they are! They are the larvae of the silk moth, Bombyx mori.

I arrived at school to a ‘special delivery’ from one of the kiddies, and we all immediately opened it up and got stuck into some wonderful discussion about what these things were (worms? slugs? nunus?) and out came the Field Guide to try and identity what exactly these creepy crawlies were (not that we were actually able to identity them, but the idea is to get into the habit of looking things up in the book). And then lots more discussion on what they eat (mulberry leaves!!) which I just so happened to have a large one growing in the field behind the school. So off we went to collect fresh leaves for the silk worms.

The silkworms lead into the ‘theme’ or rather, the letter for the week and I pulled out my playdough mats for the Letter C and we read the story of Clever Cat (we love you Letterland!) and spoke about what other ‘C’ things we could think of…and from this we found a few more things to add to learning; clouds, cows & cats.

For ‘writing practice’ (I don’t believe in anything too formal in the early years) I alternate using a big white board with lots of different sensory letters for the children to touch and trace. For this week I pulled out the rice tray and every had a go at writing the letter themselves in the rice. I always start this exercise at snack time (or while they are busy with playdough/plasticine), by reading the corresponding Letterland story that goes along with each letter, while everyone eats their snack or keeps their hands busy. And then they come up one by one so I can give them some undivided attention while they practice their letter formation. I leave this set up out for the week so that they can come and go as they please and play/learn when they are inspired to.

I had 2 finished artwork pieces in mind when we started this week (or rather when I realised we would be learning about the Letter C). One for clouds (this involved painting with shaving foam…such a fun process art activity!) and then sticking cotton wool onto the background for the clouds.

The other art piece would be loosely based on The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. We did marble painting (in green and yellow for the body of the caterpillar) onto white paper doilies with one red piece (done by my eldest, Everly) for the head.

{How to do the Marble Painting: simply dollop paint onto your paper/cardboard, and then let the kids roll the marble around the page. This is a little trial and error as to how many marbles to use, how quickly to roll…ie before the paint dries…and for the little hands to practice holding up the tray and getting the hang of moving the marbles around the tray. My favourite paints to use are the Giotto Tempura paints. The colours are nice and bright and the paint lasts for ages. They are well worth the extra money spent}

We also chatted about the life cycle of a silk worm (I didn’t worry too much about the whole worm vs caterpillar thing…can’t let facts get in the way of arts and crafts haha) and that they turn into moths or butterflies. The boys especially loved this very hands on week and a few of the kiddies were brave enough to really get stuck in and play with the silk worms.

The Red Shed - All About Rainbows

These posts document my teaching adventures in starting up a Reggio-inspired school in my farm shed in January 2023. I’ll share more about how all this came about soon, but in the mean time, I hope you enjoy these moments & learnings.

This week was filled with colourful sensory play, lots of paint (and mess!!!) and most importantly (at least for me and my view of education!) accidental learning through purposeful play.

I set up our sensory table (I had one custom made by Cob&Pickle in Howick…click here for a link to their Facebook page) and put some laminated rainbow images into the trays. I covered these with beans and rice and then let the children ‘dig for the rainbow treasure’. This was such a hit! I used some of the left over rainbow rice I made a good couple of years ago (yes, I am as shocked as you that that batch of rainbow rice is still going strong!). I love the photo of the kids looking underneath the tubs to see the rainbow (make sure to print and laminate it double sided so that it actually shows up nicely both from the top and the bottom).

I bought one of these lovely wooden rainbow stackers from Thornwood Treasures a few years ago for my kids, and it was the perfect open ended toy to bring out for this week. The kids had a lot of fun with them, using them in all sorts of ways…it really is a fantastic toy!

For ‘writing practice’ (I don’t believe in anything too formal in the early years) I use a big white board with lots of different sensory letters for the children to touch and trace. Then they get to have a go at writing the letter themselves with a white board marker. I always start this exercise at snack time (or while they are busy with playdough/plasticine), by reading the corresponding Letterland story that goes along with each letter, while everyone eats their snack or keeps their hands busy. And then they come up one by one so I can give them some undivided attention while they practice their letter formation.

Another favourite process art activity is marble painting. Simply dollop paint onto your paper/cardboard, and then let the kids roll the marble around the page. This is a little trial and error as to how many marbles to use, how quickly to roll (ie before the paint dries!) and for the little hands to practice holding up the tray and getting the hang of moving the marbles around the tray.

My favourite paints to use are the Giotto Tempura paints. The colours are nice and bright and the paint lasts for ages. They are well worth the extra money spent.

We also had some left over cardboard that we used for these (see the last two photos), and I suggest having more scrap paper/cardboard on hand as the kids always love this activity and will want to do more and more and more.

One of my favourite lesson of the year has been introducing the kids to measurements (and of course mixing of colours!) with this really simple set up. We were given a couple of these polystyrene test tube trays, and when you add droppers/syringes/pippettes they are perfect for all sorts of colour experiments.

Everyone got a turn to help me fill up the jugs with water, and then we had a discussion on colours (and what is a primary and secondary colour…this was a recap for the older kiddies) and then it was all systems go for some really fun colour water play.

This was a really fun & colourful week that I enjoyed just as much as my kiddies.

The Red Shed - The letter 'i' with a focus on insects & ink

These posts document my teaching adventures with the Reggio-inspired ‘school’ I started up in my farm shed in January 2023. I’ll share more about how all this came about soon, but in the mean time, enjoy these moments & learnings.

We spent the last week learning all about Impy Ink aka the letter ‘Ii’ (I love Letter Land!) which led us to learning about insects as well.

We took a lovely long walk down to the dam (accompanied by my two hounds, Zara the Boerboell and our Korean rescue pup, Shadow the Jindo). I had told the kids to collect as many feathers as they could find (I had the plan to use them as quill pens) which led to lots of discussion about all the different birds that the feathers could have come from.

For ‘writing practice’ (I don’t believe in anything too formal in the early years) I use a big white board with lots of different sensory letters for the children to touch and trace. Then they get to have a go at writing the letter themselves with a white board marker. I always start this exercise at snack time, by reading the corresponding Letterland story that goes along with each letter, while everyone eats their snack. And then they come up one by one so I can give them some undivided attention while they practice their letter formation.

I mixed up some pots (glass are best because they are heavy & therefore harder to knock over than plastic…and the little ones really do learn how to handle and be around glass when they are given the opportunity to) of tempura paint & water. Just add more water or paint to get a nice ‘inky’ texture.

I printed out some scanned handwriting sheets (again, not to force any formal handwriting) and let them loose with their quills.

And now on to the Insects!

Over the week we chatted a lot about the different kinds of insects (mentioning what makes an insect an insect). I froze our plastic insect collection into some coloured water (I used liquid food colouring to colour the water) and then set everyone up into pairs with a couple of hammers/plastic knives and a small container of salt. The salt helps to melt the ice (it’s a very slow process though…so definitely take them outside for the sun to speed things up!) and let them loose to hammer and smack to their hearts content. They all loved this activity.

I had a vision of a particular looking piece of art in mind for this week, and I’m sure you can agree that the final product came out beautifully. I printed out an a4 sized beetle (I will attach the file below if you’d like to download a copy of the beetles to make your own) and then gave everyone some watercolours to paint with. My only instruction was to make them as bright as possible, and to try not leave any white space on the beetles.

Yuval Zommer’s Big Book of Bugs is an amazing resource for any lessons on creepy crawlies. I got my copy on Takealot a few years ago.

Then I was set with the arduous task of carefully cutting out each creature (this was much harder than it look due to all the little legs and feelers!). I then pasted them onto brightly coloured paper, trimmed them down and stuck them onto black card and finally laminated.

Here is how they turned out. I just LOVE them!

Laminating anything watercoloured really makes the colours pop (and it also helps with the longevity of the artwork which can now withstand being taken on and off the fridge by sticky little hands!).