"Take a photo" scavenger hunt (with free printable)

In the middle of July we went up to the mountains. We were mainly in Hungarian up there but I wanted to have some English fun with E. As she's into taking photos a lot nowadays I made her an ad hoc "take a photo" scavenger hunt activity.

This sheet I made is hand-made but I created a free printable which you can download at the end of this post.

E. can take better pictures than this

We went for an excursion to a lake. E. at first wasn't very impressed with this activity, which surprised me to a great extent. But as we went along she got more and more excited.

All the photos were taken by her. Some are blurry some are absolutely gorgeous:

a bush with flowers

lake

Ms. Photographer

Invisible spider web

log

roots

she can't use the zoom but the ducks are in the top right corner

 She told me to add green plants on her scavenger hunt activity sheet:

green plants

blurry dragonfly as a bug

 I also needed to add "stones and rocks" as it was E.'s wish

Rock with moss

stones

the look out tower

oak leaves

Unfortunately, she couldn't take a photo of a butterfly as they never seemed to land. Anyways, this project was more them rewarding if you have a look at the pictures. I think we'll cover some other topics in the near future, like babies, playground, market, just to mention a few.

Now click on the link to print your own "Take a photo" scavenger hunt activity sheet.

Conker games

Whenever we go somewhere we MUST collect something. My pockets are full of stones, acorns, berries and conkers, just to mention a few. One day we visited Margaret-island (a small island on the River Danube, Budapest) and managed to collect tons of different fruit of various trees and bushes. 

Rose hips. conkers, sycamore "rotors", pine cones, acorns, London plane seed balls, wild pear, seed pods of China tree

So during E.'s nap time I put together this tray of all kinds of fruits and a magnifying glass. As soon as she discovered the tray she eagerly examined their texture, the surface and the inside of the fruits.

We collected a full bag of conkers and pine cones, half of which we took to E.'s kindergarten. The other half of cones we'll use for decoration and Christmas ornaments (see a later post) and the conkers we've used to play games with.

Counting conkers

I put the conkers in a woven basket and placed the number cards on the table. E. needed to put the right number of conkers below the cards.

When we played this game we'd just returned home from the nursery and changed languages. You can hear in this video how she is mixing English and Hungarian, and also, me asking back "Sorry?" all the time in a silly way ;)

I've found a super-cute squirrel grid game on prekinders.com and although we didn't have enough acorns or walnuts that squirrels love eating, we used our conkers as manipulatives for this game.

How does the game go?

E., Daddy and myself played so I printed 3 copies of the squirrel grid (of 20 squirrel) and put LOADS of conkers in a bowl. You'll need a game die. Of course, the youngest starts the game, throws the game die and identifies the number on it. The player then needs to place the same number of conkers on the grid. We take turns and the winner is who finishes the grid first. (You can play it as an addition game with 2 dice if your child is older. If he/she is younger, you can use a special die with only 1-2-3 on it)

I'll be the winner, not you Daddy.

Mind you! Conkers are slightly toxic, so it's better to know that just a very few animals can eat it (like deer), but people and squirrels never.

 Name written in conkers

I prepared my daughter's name, each letter on a different piece of paper. First, she put the letters in the right order, then following the lines of the letters, she placed the conkers along the lines.

 Krokotak conker mushrooms

What you need:

• conkers
• acorns
• play dough

Not as good-looking as the original idea, but they represent our family: E. mushroom, Daddy mushroom and Mommy mushroom. (from right to left) 

Last year we did some conker threading after making a whole on the conkers with the help of a screwdriver. If you haven't had enough of conkers, check it out.

What do you play with what you collect at autumn time? Share with me in the comments.

Autumn leaves are falling down

My favourite season has arrived and it seems E. is enjoying it a lot, too. On the way home from the nursery we always collect some things (leaves, berries, conkers, bark pieces, stones etc.) to play or to do some craft projects with.

I put some contact paper on the window (sticky side out) and on a tray I prepared all the leaves we'd collected. And the sticking started.

Daddy assisted the little artist.

Art critic: Doggie. He sniffed the leaves then moved away.

Final art piece: Autumn leaves are falling down (and some petals)

Another project of ours with the autumn leaves was making a hedgehog. I saw this ideas here.
I drew three hedgehogs (as this was also a family project) and we glued the leaves on their backs.

Serious gluing in process

Final pieces of art

Another leaf craft we've made:
(they are not with real leaves but crepe paper)

More gluing and more sticking

 End result :)

More autumn crafts are on their way. Stay tuned!

Spring nature hunt with a muffin tray

Spring has arrived, together with some rain but luckily today it's been sunny so we went out for a spring nature hunt.

I got the idea on mamapapabubba.com. This blog is written by a Canadian mum, Jen and she's got great ideas I love stealing. The spring nature hunt is one of them.

So I was in a rush to prepare everything, because in the park where I was planning to do the nature hunt the grass is growing very high and it is likely to be mowed in the near future. Then we would lose all the wild flowers, high grass and our fun activity.

I've got and old muffin tray. It was in a very poor condition, so I sprayed it gold. This served as the receptacle (= a new word for me meaning: a container for storing or putting objects in) Then I made Daddy print the pictures of some nature items that I'd put together the previous night.

Our native nanny, A. arrived at 10.30 today and we were ready to set off.

E. is identifying what to look for

At firs E. was carrying the tray around, then we put it in the push chair.

E. is not a great fan of walking (she prefers to be carried), but this time she was running around looking for the items on the list, filling up the tray.

I thought it wouldn't be easy to find seeds, so I took some wheat seeds with me from home, but A. was very attentive and found some. I didn't need to fake anything :)

wheat heads

I knew exactly where we could find some moss. (E.'s favourite word from the list)

We also bumped into some bees and beetles we needed to observe closely.

One of E.'s favourite flowers is the dandelion and its clock. Now she didn't blow the seeds away, but collected them in the tray.

E. succeeded in tucking a big horse chestnut tree leaf in the hole. Well done, girl!

We found a shamrock with four leaves. We'll be lucky :)

Finding soil fascinated E. the most.

It was hard to find buds, but we managed in the end.

At home A. and E. went on to read E.'s nature book she got for Easter.

I'd like to thank Jen for the great idea. We spent a lovely hour with searching, enjoying the sunshine and learning a lot about nature.