"Fungi are the grand recyclers of the planet and the vanguard species in habitat restoration"

When we hit this time of year I feel a little more at one with the world. The temperature drops to how I like it, the autumnal colours are amazing and the fungi starts popping everywhere. There's something so satisfying about stomping through the woods and being greeted by something beautiful growing from the ground, on logs or high up in trees. Opeie started showing an interest in fungi after we spotted a bright red toadstool one afternoon about 5 years ago, we had no idea what it was and needed to know more. Then a couple of years back we read 'The Grim Grotto', one of the books from Lemony Snicket's 'A series of unfortunate events', which got him hooked again and it kickstarted an ongoing Mycology project that we add to every autumn.

After turning over rotting logs and crawling around on our knees may-september looking for beetles, its nice to change it up a little on the build up to winter time and we are never disappointed by what the autumn months have to offer. I thought I'd share some of the great fungi we have found...

I love these outdoorsy projects that we start because they are never ending, we're always spotting new fungi and Beetles meaning we can keep popping back to the Entomology and Mycology projects to add our finds. I really feel like revisiting these projects is great for Opeie's development as he is looking back on how he was covering the work last autumn and he can see his own growth which is really satisfying for  him (and me).

We're still not confident enough to eat what we find but the excitement of finding new ones is more than enough. Now to try and identify the ones we don't know for a Popes and Twink video.

“Keep your face to the sun and you will never see the shadows.”

The autumn/winter weather is definitely here to stay for a while and although its been all big coats and winter boots, Opeie is not letting the change in seasons hinder his fashionsta ways and is still donning shades when he goes out. 

I love how confident he is when it comes to what he's wearing, he reminds me so much of myself when I was a kid trying to find my own style. These retro style cats eye glasses were from Smartbuyglasses and they've got a great selection over Black Friday if (like Opeie) you are looking to stick it to this drizzly wet weather.

Check out the latest deals here.

"Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns."

Mrs M has pointed out nearly every day recently that this is the most beautiful Autumn that we have had and she is so right. The colours on the trees have been amazing and the dry weather has meant that all those red, orange and yellow leaves have been blowing around in the wind for weeks. It has also given me and Opeie the chance to get out adventuring even more. This has been the perfect season for our home schooling fun and we've been taking the Micro scooters out looking for interesting things wherever we've been. Autumn is great for fungi hunting and this year has been exceptionally good as we've spotted toadstools and lovely red Agaric fungus, which Ive never seen out before.

There is so much fun to be had in this dry, sunny autumn weather, making piles of leaves and jumping around in them and we have been taking full advantage. These scooting adventures of ours are what homeschooling at this age is all about. Getting out and taking in our surroundings is the best kind of education for young children and these afternoons scooting together have also been a great way of breaking up the more academic learning we have been doing at home.

I'm hoping that this dry Autumn means that we are in for a similar winter, so that our Micro adventures can continue through the colder months and our outdoor home education can continue on wheels.

"One sunday morning the warm sun came up and - pop! - out of the egg came a tiny and very hungry Caterpillar."

The time has come to make use of the conkers we collected last weekend. Earlier today Opeie pulled out The Hungry Caterpillar as one of his pile of afternoon reading material and it gave me an idea for the booty we had collected on Saturday.  I fetched the bag of conkers and together me and Opeie drilled holes in some of them in preparation.

Next we went looking for some string and after making a knot in one end Opeie threaded the conkers on all by himself. Opeie then told me it looked like a caterpillar, I knew it wouldn't take him long to cotton on to what was going on.

We tied the other end and went on a mission looking for googly eyes to attach to the face. There you have it a simple autumn craft session that Opeie loved every minute of. I could see that he wasn't ready to end our little activity so we started something else in keeping with our afternoon reading. Can you all remember what that hungry caterpillar turns in to after stuffing his face.

We had some string left and plenty of pre-drilled conkers so we made another body like the caterpillar only a little shorter (I tried to pick conkers that went up in size gradually).

Last year Seth had opted to be The Hungry Caterpillar (butterfly) at his schools world book day so myself and Mrs M spent an evening making him a costume and his wings had become a decoration on his ceiling. After completing the conker body we attached it to Seth's card and tissue paper wings. Two more drilled holes and some pipe cleaners and the butterfly was beginning to look as beautiful as in the book, but we were out of googly eyes (oh no). Luckily in these sort of situations you can always rely on Lego. Two Lego eyes and voila, One Hungry Caterpillar and his beautiful colourful conker made counterpart.