The Gifts of Autumn

Everyone must take time to sit and watch the leaves turn.

~Elizabeth Lawrence~

I was inspired and reminded by my last block placement at a long day care service of the gifts that autumn has for us. In fact, nature in general gives us gifts each season that we can embrace in our teaching practice.

I've noticed that when I'm not attached to a service or to a group of children (you know, 'shackled' to their portfolios and the daybook: document document DOCUMENT!!!), you are able to just chill out and go along for the ride.

I thought I might play around with some ideas from my past as well as some new ones and put together documentation on leaves and quite possibly with an emphasis on autumn.

Now, this effort will not include any pictures of children, nor pictures I’ve taken at jobs. I am going to have to be creative with images from my collection and my environment. I am also going to have to use my memory from the past 6 years of teaching.

The photo in this blog entry is from the Liquid Ambar that used to live at my grandparents house. Sadly, my parents chose to remove the tree and replace it with a Manchurian Pear tree which is lovely in its own way ... but I do miss that beautiful Liquid Ambar. But unfortunately Liquid Ambars are not very sewer pipe friendly. I personally would have spent heaps of money changing the pipes and kept the tree! But that’s me! I’m a sucker for a gorgeous tree. In fact trees have played such an important part of my childhood:

*  the “oak” tree we used to climb as children and play helicopters (no idea if it was an oak tree, we just thought it looked like it might be one and that was that!)

* the giant sequoia we had growing in our backyard back home that I used to play  under ...

* the Japanese maple we had planted next to our fish pond ...

* the giant copper beech tree our neighbours had which had the most gorgeous plum coloured leaves.

* our fruit trees: apple, plum, apricot, lemon, lime

* the oak grove at the local botanical gardens we’d visit almost every weekend as a family

So as you can see, I'm a nature loving girl who has an affinity for trees.

So, I'm going to play with a mock-up documentation on leaves and see where that goes. I'm not professing that this will be the best documenation out there. I'm not claiming that this is how it should be done ... I'm just going to put together based upon events of my past and ideas that I havent yet followed up on. It's up to you to do your own thing. This documentation just sits within my experience, my personal practice and is part of my own professional development path. When it's complete, I'll turn it into photos and post them on the blog. Afterthat, I can convert it to a PDF and if you'd like a copy I can email it to you. Here goes!

The quote came from: http://www.quotegarden.com/autumn.html

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