Over the Top

I'm part of a co-op joy school for Megan. There are three of us moms with daughters similar in age (birthdays in March, August and September). The girls get along really well, and it's fun to see them learning new things, and honing some of the skills they already have.

Since the leaves were changing, I thought it'd be fun to do a "unit" on autumn and fall leaves. Well, my ambitious undertaking included attempting some leaf chromatography, identifying the tree based on leaf shapes, and even having a three-year-old construct a mobile.

Well, the chromatography didn't work very well. You couldn't differentiate between green and yellow pigments (although the red leaf you could see the yellow and red,but you could see that before the chromatography) and I doubt they could've really understood what it was all about anyway. The identification was a bust (I'm NOT a botanist!).

The mobile... well, the kids did a great job gathering the leaves. They even did rather well with getting the strings attached to the stems using tape. However, Megan's mobile became my project. I didn't make the others' mobiles as intricate. Some might consider this a bit of a waste of time (I almost did). Still, it was rather fun to see if I could get the balance just right, and a little annoying that perfectionist side gets irritated when the sticks aren't perfectly horizontal. It's still fun. I like having the leaves in the house this way- at least for a day or two.


BTW, I do NOT recommend doing this project with three-year-olds. Umm, their attention span just didn't cut it. Maybe I'll attempt it next year when they're four... and not use as many leaves and sticks!

I tried to get a video to show how they swing around. I'm the one trying to blow on it to get them to move. Miranda started crying for me at the top of the stairs.