The Autumn leaf situation

Rowan was off school one day before half term because he’s had a really chesty cough. Having seen him hospitalised with a similar complaint I wanted to keep him away from some of the other children who I knew were coughing at spluttering in the classroom. Damage limitation and all that.

He didn’t really feel poorly though so getting him to relax was pretty hard work. Our house backs on to a reasonably sized park so we got wrapped up and investigated the Autumn leaf situation for a while…

Of course we couldn’t just leave the leaves… what a ridiculous notion! Instead, we did the park ranger a big favour and saved him a good half hour of leaf clearing.

Minion came too, naturally.

Once we’d collected the leaves we needed (and several hundred we didnt) we went home to make use of our new collection.

I’d bought some tissue paper the week before for a craft project I never got around to, so we got that out too along with some paper and a lot of pva glue.

I suggested doing some leaf rubbings at first but Rowan wasn’t a great fan of that idea, so we examined the best of what we’d collected while we pondered on what to do.

Eventually we decide to give the twigs and leaves a new lease of life as a different kind of tree. The pva glue didn’t work as well as we’d hoped so there was a lot of sticky tape involved in this particular project.

Rowan was super pleased with his creation and I managed to get him to sit for around an hour while we were doing this so the activity was definitely an all round win!

For those of you without an artistic eye, the leaf that appears to have worked it’s way loose from the tape is actually ‘falling’ because it’s Autumn…

Rowan thoroughly enjoyed doing this and it made me realise that we haven’t played outside nearly as much these past few weeks. It’s so easy when the nights are drawing in to scurry back home from the school run or declare every Sunday a pyjama day, but just 20 minutes out collecting leaves on the park did us both the world of good.

What outdoor activities do you do as a family in the winter?