Nature themed morning

Today at our homeschool co-op, the preschoolers participated in nature themed activities. It was a gorgeous day to do so.
We began with God's story of creation from the Bible then moved outside to do some exploring and collecting. I prepared a scavenger box for each child in advance, knowing we wouldn't have time for the children to design their own. I labeled ours "Color by nature scavenger box." You can find these boxes described in multiple places online, but the basic idea is: paint your egg cups with a variety of colors and place your (small) found object in its corresponding cup.
We were able to find several dandelions and tried painting with them-actually pressing and rubbing the flower part onto the paper. They do make a nice yellow color on white paper. We used many of the other items for gluing onto collages.
The kids used tempera to paint some large smooth stones I'd picked up at the beach last summer. I love seeing the pretty rock my son painted so I'll probably pull out the rest of our collection and have my daughter paint some.
The kids were duly impressed, and slightly confused, by the dirt cake we had for our snack. This has been around for so long, but it's always a treat to serve it to a child who has never seen it before. I layered it in a lined pot and stuck a flower in to do the dessert justice. We also sliced apricots, apples, pears, and an orange and compared the seeds from each fruit.
It was a nice morning.