continuing our tree study - fall

This afternoon we decided that we needed to do our fall entry for our continuing tree study before all of the leaves were gone!  :-)

So, even thought it was a cold rainy day, we decided to brave the elements and take a walk outside.

Here is a shot of the leaves that are still hanging on...

Alex managed to find another leaf as big as his head...
A pretty tree we passed on our walk...
Alex's favorite leaf...
Clara's favorite...
A shot of some of the leaves on the ground...
They look so sad in the photo above... last week they were still bright and cheery.  Now they've been on the ground a while, they've been trampled on and they're wet... sigh.

Clara inspecting her leaf collection...
One last shot of the tree we're studying for the year....
And then it was back inside to work in our nature journals.  I read aloud from the Handbook of Nature Studywhile they worked on their drawings.  I read the section on pages 620-622 about The Way a Tree Grows.  I love how it compares the leaves to factories, that mental image worked well with my two.  

The autumn leaf which is so beautiful has completed its work.

Here is Alex's entry....
and Clara's...
The labeling was still to be done when I took these, but I loved how hard they worked on capturing the bright colors of the leaves.  However, I noticed that even though we were supposed to be studying "our tree", neither one of them used leaves from "our tree" for their journal entry.  Oh well!  :-)