There is something about Autumn which I find really inspiring. I suppose it is the combination of long walks, beautiful autumnal colours and colder evening where you stay inside and have more time for planning. I love getting outside in Autumn and hunting the natural treasure. The girls always take their trick or treat buckets and try to find conkers and Autumn leaves.
It still seems really early as there are only a few leaves which have fallen from the trees but we seem to have had a good year for conkers. The girls came home with a good pile of them.
I always find this a great activity for some maths practice. The first thing you have to do when you get home is line up the conkers and count up how many you have and who has got the most.
The only problem is then you have to decide what to do with them when you have collected them. I thought it would be a good idea to have an Autumn sensory bin with a maths twist.
We used red lentils, coloured bow pasta, sequins and a few little pumpkin chocolates as an incentive. I put some shiny number stickers on the conkers.
I left the Halloween buckets and a couple of spoons so the girls could do some scooping and pouring. They always love playing with the lentils and actually this is a lovely material on its own.
I also left out an egg carton with numbers in the bottom. I didn’t give the girls any instructions but they decided to match the conkers to the numbers in the egg carton.
This is a great activity for number recognition. If you match them all then you can have a pumpkin sweet.
This is particularly good for Rose who will back away from anything which looks like work. As long as it is play based she will choose it.
I set this up for the girls for after school and it was a really lovely relaxing activity and definitely kept them happy during the tricky hour before bed. Fall activities for toddlers is a brilliant resource.
