Today we had a lovely day of free play at home.

Every Wednesday my aunty and uncle come and spend the day with us and we always have a lovely time.

Today we made the most of a lovely sunny autumn day to get outside in the garden and explore the season.

I wanted to collect things from the garden to use in our arts, crafts and sensory play for the rest of the week.

As we stepped out in our coats and wellies we discovered that our dinosaur swamp is growing! It has grass shooting through the soil and today through the ice! My uncle showed Esther and William how the ice was like a skin over the water. They had great fun cracking the ice and holding slithers of it.

We then all wandered round the garden to see what we could find.

Mushrooms and toadstools.

The final flowers of summer lingering in Tilda’s gardens.

Pumpkins ready for harvesting.

Ladybirds lingering in perishing petals

Leaves of every colour – red and yellow, brown and gold

The last of the apples

A few bright green figs

We filled a bag with sticks and leaves and flowers and grass

All ready for our seasonal art and craft and play

All ready for changing our snowy tracks

To autumn storm tracks

With sticks acting as trees across the lines

And engines hiding in piles of leaves.

Tomorrow after preschool I am going to drop the leaves over the tracks

Like a storm

Place the trees across the lines

Then on Friday morning I will extend the play by adding some little autumn animal toys for the engines to find

Today though we just looked at the different colours and shapes and textures

We found some different smells

Today was exploration

Before we go on to creation

We are going to make leaf monsters and leaf animals and people

Based on the wonderful book, Leaf Man.

One of our favourite autumn leaves!

After the leaves have been used on the tracks we will paint them and stick them to paper

Much as Esther and I did a few weeks back

When creating our sparkling autumn scenes

Esther loves glitter and glue

And I do too

When we had one of our mummy and daughter days

We created autumn pictures together and it was lovely

I cannot wait to see what unfolds over the coming week

With all our autumn finds.

I have been collecting inspiration over on Pinterest.

Googly eyes at the ready?

Let the painting and sticking begin!