learning from stones

While Luath and I sat on the beach today it real hit home to me how much nature has to offer as a basic learning tool.  I know I already knew but it got me thinking about why so much "structured" learning is indoor and book based, maybe there should be more of a pre nursery age push for more nature led learning.  Daddy and I are big book lovers and Luath looks like she will be a book fan too.  I am amazed how much she takes in from books, so  I am far from knocking books off our daily activities.  Already I am aiming to make more of our time outdoors but I am now thinking about all the "school" we could do using nature - even on horrible days we could take some of the outdoors in.

What we learnt from stones today in only a few minutes

such a variety from one very small area



 1.  Colours - OK there aren't too many of the primary colours among our stones, but there were shades of white, black, orange,  red, green, grey, brown, blue

2.  Shapes - pretty much any shape you wanted was there for the finding

3.  Textures - rough, smooth, grainy, pitted, shiny

4. Weight - heavy, light.  Some big stones were lighter than smaller ones.

5. Counting -

6. Sorting - into colour/size/shape

 (15mths)