leafy, outdoor alphabet letter hunt

It’s very leafy over here. With tons of huge trees dropping leaves at about a million per minute, our yard and house is covered.

But before I pulled out the ole rake, I of course had to capitalize on the potential for a leaf-party and challenge Maddy, Owen, and Cora to a backyard leafy alphabet hunt. Seriously.

Not with real leaves, of course.  We used our leafy alphabet letters from last year–but this time all jumbled up in our already-leafy back yard.

It was a leaf extravaganza, to say the least.

And we’re still missing ‘O’.

Here’s the skinny:

• Leafy Outdoor Alphabet Hunt: This was the collision of our Leafy Letters, our ABC Hunt, and our Clothespin Match, and what resulted was a bit of leafy chaos and surprisingly, a lot of laughs.  And, of course, one lost letter.

Since Maddy came home with very little work yesterday, I thought was a great time to sneak in some backyard play time and some backyard learning. It was a bit overcast, but the rain stopped for a teeny bit between pick-up and the shuffle to dive and ballet.

So I grabbed our Leafy Letters, some yarn, and our ABC Clothespins, and while Maddy, Owen, and Cora were playing, I tied the string to the porch.

Separating the uppercase and lowercase letter leaves. . .

And while they continued playing, I dumped the leafy letters on the table.

Owen came over and asked what I was doing with all those leaves. I said, Hey remember our leafy letters from last fall? I just found them, and I’m separating the uppercase letters from the lowercase letters. Want to help?

He did. Phew!

And in a minute, I said, I’m going to hide them all over the yard, so good you’ll never find them.  But if you do, you and Cora and Maddy are going to pin them to the clothespins just like we used to inside.  Sound cool?

He was totally up for it–like my game-guy usually is–and he really got Maddy and Cora psyched up. He ran back to the swing set yelling, Maddy! Cora! Mommy’s going to hide the letters around the yard, but not the cards–this time the LEAVES!! That’s going to be so hard, right???

So as soon as the letters were separated, I told the kids to hang out in the front yard for a few minutes while I ran crazy hiding leaves. A part of me knew we’d never see some letters again, but that was fine by me. I bought the bag on clearance at the craft store last year, so I could just keep my eyes open end of season this year.

That tricky letter ‘G’ was right between some tree roots.

I hid the leaves on the fence, between tree roots, by our fire pit. . .

. . . on the playset, on the porch, and on the chairs.

I hid the leaves in the trees, in the dump truck, in the garden. . .

. . . and under rocks, branches, and bushes.

 

And before they went leafy letter hunting, I told them that when they found a letter, they had to call it out then clip it onto the clothespin that matched the letter.  I knew that Maddy and Owen could do this no problem, so the focus was on Cora, really.

Of course, Maddy and Owen can use the running around exercise and fine motor practice of clipping the leaf onto the clothesline, but unless these two are here, Cora’s not all that into my learning games. So I was totally using them. Well, kind of. . .

Who will find the hidden ‘B’?

 

Cora clips a leaf onto the clothesline! Woo-hooo! She found some!

What happened was that the kids weren’t calling out letters. And they weren’t clipping letters as they found them.

But they were running around the yard like three little crazies, finding leaf letters and crumbling them into a big ball in their hands. And when I called for a quick ‘clip break’ they did come on over, clip what they found, then got back to hunting. And that was cool with me.

In the end, we found most of the letters, minus letter ‘O’ who at this point will probably be raked and sent to the recycling center because of course I cannot remember where I hid it.

But the kids keep searching for it when it crosses their minds, each time they head out back. . . poor, poor letter O.

And that’s it. Just a quickie fun way we played with letters, got moving and grooving a bit, and had some outdoor fun on a sweet, sunny, fall afternoon.

Happy Leafy Letter Hunting!

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