Yesterday, I found myself reading Amber Strocel’s blog and was inspired, as I often am, by her zest for life - and motherhood. In her post from Friday, she introduced me to the concept of a nature table.

Now, it’s been raining here all day; and if you believe the weather report, is supposed to continue for the next three days.  A long rainy weekend with two little kids necessitates an engaging indoor activity! What better activity for a rainy day than creating a nature table?

First, we brought the old craft table down from the attic.  It had recently been retired due to its small size & copious coatings of glue and paint. I couldn’t bear to just throw it out when we replaced it – and good thing – as it’s just the perfect size for its new life of holding little treasures. 

The children covered it with my daughter’s old receiving blanket. It has roses on it & we considered that the first nature-y part of our nature table.

Next up, we scoured our house for items brought in from outside, or things that reminded us of being outside.  It was really interesting to watch my children choose items – the two year old chose a soap dish shaped like a flower.  The five year old chose a flower sun catcher she’d painted. They added flower stickers, a beanie baby worm, two small plants, a painting, a photograph, animal figurines, two plants, and some seeds. 

We assembled the collected items and observed.  As lovely as it looked, we all felt like something was missing.  So…we donned our rain gear & headed out into the deluge! Outside was the real nature we were missing: rocks, leaves, seed pods, pine needles!
 

A half hour later, soaked to the bone, but happy as clams, we returned with our cold hands full of nature’s gifts:

We dried off our haul, added it to the table, and came up with this finished work:

I think it turned out beautifully!  Yet, more importantly, when we were finished, my 5-year-old announced: “This was really fun Mom!”  And truly, that’s all I needed to hear.  Thanks again Amber for inspiring an afternoon of fun, education, and the simple (and free!) wonder and beauty of nature.