Enjoying Autumn

Today we are starting the transition from Autumn to Winter. Our family celebrates, and opens gifts on, St. Nicholas Day which is December 6th. That means it is time for the Wrapped Advent Calendar! Before getting out and wrapping our Christmas & Winter books in lovely wrapping paper and assembling them in a basket so that my youngest child can choose one to unwrap and read every night in the countdown to St. Nick's arrival, we did one last Autumn puppetry. This was "Autumn Bear" from Suzanne Down's book of Autumn Tales. It's quite nice to have a snowflake silk handy for this, since it's a story to transition from Autumn into Winter. You can use felt finger puppets, beeswax animals, needlefelted wool animals, or wooden animals. You can also substitute other woodland animals for the Raven, Raccoon, Rabbit, Deer, Owl, and Fox.


The bear wanders around the animals in the circle, rumble bumble, and they all dash away to their separate parts of the forest. He climbs up the path through the woods to his warm cave and curls up snug, while the first snow begins to fall.

Older children who can sit through a long story might like Linda Kroll's beautifully illustrated Winter, Awake!


As we wrap books and change out the Nature table display, I want to do a quick blog post of some of my favorite family moments from this Autumn. I blog here with many hats on... lead classroom teacher in my co-op... student in Waldorf teacher training... homeschool curriculum consultant... and, last but not least, Mom.

I recently realized that not only do I have four children, but each one of them was born in a different season of the year!  My November daughter is the Autumn child.  My January daughter is the Winter child.  My March daughter is the Spring child.  And my son Zac was born on Memorial Day weekend so I'm counting him as the Summer child!  

Each season we have a wonderful chance to sit down together as a family and celebrate the passing of time.

Here is my family (three teenagers and a two and a half year old) celebrating Autumn in many ways this year: 

 visiting the pumpkin farm

and admiring colors and textures

going on a hay ride

hammering plants to see if they will make a print

collecting black walnuts to make homemade ink

and pokeberries

Zac DID NOT help collect the pokeberries!

taking a wonderful walk in the park at dusk to see the jack-o-lantern display

walking the pumpkin trail again as the sun goes down

giving Zac an assortment of colors and a wine cork to use as a stamp to decorate his little pumpkin

hanging out with a big sister

what could be more fun than this!?

a bowl of acorn squash seeds

and some rubber snakes...

fabulous sensory play!

a nature hike on a beautiful day

finding a box turtle in some leaves

why NOT wear your elephant costume to church?

ready for trick-or-treating

with a sister's lipstick kiss on his forehead

the many beautiful colors in our yard

I hope your family had a wonderful Autumn as well.

This post contains affiliate links to the materials I actually use for homeschooling. I hope you find them helpful. Thank you for your support!