Exploring Nature With Children: Harvest Moon Week

This is our second year following Exploring Nature With Children. This is a year-long Charlotte Mason-inspired curriculum. Each week is centered around a nature theme and the curriculum gives parents/caregivers ideas and prompts of conversations, studies and works to do with children. It’s also designed to work with families who have children at different ages and it works as a core curriculum or a supplementary guide. I purchased this curriculum because I wanted to and these posts are not sponsored in any way.

The first week of September was Harvest Moon week! So it made sense to turn the flisat table into a sensory table; one side for sun/day time and the other for the moon/night time. The sun side included blue rice, cotton balls for clouds and the moon side included black rice, and small glow in the dark stars. Eventually the girls paired another work I had on the shelf with the sensory table: nocturnal and diurnal animals.

We also did a baking soda and vinegar experiment! I froze a water, baking soda and glitter mix inside of a balloon. When we were ready, I cut the balloon away and gave them each a dropper and some vinegar and they enjoyed watching and listening to the “Moon rocks” fizz.

I put out a variety of moon activities from pin-punching, to cutting strips, to the sand tray with the Sandpaper Letter /m/.

I also put out a book play activity that followed the story of Goodnight Moon. This was very popular!

They also had fun using dot markers on the letter M, and doing a moon painting project! I clipped a cotton ball to the end of a clothespin so that when they painted the black dessert plate, the cotton ball made a textured surface. Painting with a clothespin is a bit different than a paintbrush.

Of course, we explored the phases of the moon. First with matching, then with playdough (which I didn’t get a picture of!) and then with oreos… which was a favorite part of the week!

We also borrowed some books from the library and read some stories about the moon, and specifically, the harvest moon which is the closest full moon to the autumn equinox. It gets its orange hue because of the way the light travels through the atmosphere and the moon’s location on the horizon.

Anyway — the girls had such a fun week and next week we’re onto Seed Week!