nature basket

I recently came across a post on Sew Liberated (one of my favorite blogs- she makes me wish I were more crafty) about making a nature corner for her son.  I thought this was a great idea, to bring a bit of nature indoors.  The idea is to choose a few season-themed items from the outdoors and have a space inside to display them and get to talk about them with your kids, and then you can change the items depending on the season and weather.  However we don't really have a good spot for a permanent nature corner, nor is D quite old enough or disciplined enough to be trusted with object left on a table for him (they'd be strewn all over the house within about 5 minutes).  Remembering a small basket I knew I had somewhere, I figured I could make up a small nature basket for him, and I just so happened to have a couple pine cones (brought home from previous nature hikes), a miniature pumpkin that I bought for decoration before Halloween, and lemons from our tree just lying around.  I then grabbed a leaf that had fallen from the tree in our front yard, and voila!  We have a nature basket!

I called D to sit with me at his table and we looked at the items in the basket and talked about them some.  He really liked the lemon (he's played with our lemons before, we usually have an open container with a bunch of them lying around), and also the pumpkin and pinecones.  His interest lasted for just a couple minutes, about what I expected.  I'm keeping the basket up and away most of the time, and hopefully every so often as I remember we'll bring it out and talk about it again.  Then maybe when we're out on walks in the neighborhood or the park we can look for and bring home new items to add to our basket.