Autumn art and nature study, Sunday style

M's best friend A slept over a couple of times this weekend. Naturally, their hormones became an explosive argumentative force by this morning and we needed to distract them before the Evil Shrieking Woman who occasionally inhabits my body appeared.

My wonderful husband took them to a safe distance for a nice long walk in the woods and to play at the park so that I could come up with a plan. I told them, as they were leaving, to collect some nice leaves and maybe some other things they'd like to draw.

I put some banana bread in the oven to cook and started rooting through my fall stash, and got prepping.

Everyone was in a better mood after the change of scenery and the fresh air, so I pulled out our first craft. Am I the only one old enough to remember Shrinky Dinks? Well, I still had some of that kind of plastic left from the autumn craft kit I bought last year at Hearts and Trees blog, (side note: Amanda, when's this year's kit going to be ready?!!!) so I traced and cut out three maple leaves. D, M and A each got out the markers and coloured the plastic:

Here they are, set aside while we wait for the oven to cool down after the banana bread.

Once it was cool enough, we put them into the oven and three very excited kids got in "watching position":

 There was much loud cheering.

The final result? The world's cutest little suncatchers!

We moved on to leaf rubbing, something we haven't done for ages (or in D's case, ever)! The results were quite lovely.

D had had enough at this point and moved on to the Play Doh kit he got for his birthday. I find this funny, because he is a lefty, but insists on using scissors with his right despite the fact that he has to bend his wrist awkwardly to do so. Kids are strange. And stubborn, although they come by it honestly!

I suggested to M and A that they might like to try sketching some of the leaves and rocks they had brought back from their outing. They set up a plate and arranged it, so that each would be drawing the same thing but from a different perspective - I thought this was a pretty neat idea.

I am already putting together activities for our next sleepover! We ended up having a really great day together.