Ideas and resources
Kids, both young and old, will have a blast making suncatchers that are perfect for adding some color to a window or to give as a gift. These suncatchers are made by placing pony beads
in metal cookie cutters 
and then placing them in an oven. Let the kids watch as the beads melt!
Follow these directions from Tracey and discover how easy it can be to make your own suncatchers.
Did you know that October is Squirrel Awareness Month? I didn’t know we needed more awareness of these little creatures, but let’s take it as a sign to learn more about squirrels!
Let’s start with some fun facts via Kids Konnect: did you know there are five subfamilies and more that 280 species of squirrels? The smallest are pygmy squirrels and the largest, the Bhutan giant flying squirrel, can be longer that 4 feet (1.2 meters).
Tree squirrels can climb down trees so fast because their ankles can rotate 180 degrees, allowing them to grab the tree bark as they go down. While most squirrels don’t survive their first year of life, they can live five to 10 years in the wild and squirrels have been known to live up to 20 years in captivity!
Rhythms of Play has more fun facts and tips for observing squirrels if you want to add some real life nature to your nature study.
We always like to start these collections with life cycle and parts of the animal printables, so let’s grab the squirrel life cycle an parts of a squirrel worksheets from Montessori Nature. (It doesn’t look like these are free any more but they have a whole unit study on squirrels you can buy that includes life cycle and parts activities, characteristics of different kinds of squirrels, a printable poster, information about predators and more.)
Grab the squirrel lapbook printable (free with email address) from Homeschool Share to learn the parts of a squirrel, where they live, what they eat, whether they hibernate and more. There’s also a nut taste test printable, a place for making observations about squirrels, life cycle of an oak tree, games and more.
Simple Everyday Mom has some cute squirrel themed worksheets including tracing the letter s, labeling the parts of a squirrel and a letter s maze. She also has more activity pages with a squirrel theme, including matching, a more traditional maze and a counting and graphing activity.
Work on letter recognition with this squirrel and acorn game printable from Teaching Mama. I love the idea of hiding the letters in a fall themed sensory bin for kids to find, identify and match to the letter on the worksheet.
For older kids you can do this “if I were a squirrel” writing prompt from Lesson Planet.
And throw in a little counting with these squirrel and acorn tens frame printables from JDaniel4’s Mom, which you can use to count real acorns or any other little fall themed thing you have handy.
Sun catchers are supposed to be clear enomugh for the sun to shine through them… these look so solid … they might be pretty, but I wouldn’t classify them as a sun catcher… a window decoration… maybe
Actually, these are made using transparent pony beads so they are a little see through. 🙂
Doesn’t the plastic release toxic fumes? I wouldn’t want children near that.
We have done these and we use a muffin tin or other sized / shapes of pans on our grill outside. We have also used a toaster outdoors. It’s lots of fun for kids and depending on the beads you use….they are transparent!