Nature Luminary Candle Votives

What you'll need: 

-leaves and foliage
-glass votive holder or jar
-white tissue paper
-white craft glue
-water
-paintbrush
-tealight candles


How to make it:

-Collect small leaves and other foliage from outside. Be sure there’s still some life in the leaves – they shouldn’t be too dry or crumbly. (Note: We found several of our leaves on bushes as their leaves are smaller.) Once selected, lay leaves in a single layer and place a large book on top to flatten them. Leave for an hour or two.


-Spread a layer of white craft glue on the outside of the votive holder. Stick the leaves to the glue and press into place. Let dry.

-Mix equal parts of water and white craft glue to create a decoupage paste.

-Tear tissue paper into squares about one to two inches in size.

-Use a paintbrush to glue the tissue paper over the leaves using the decoupage mixture. Overlap the tissue paper and make sure all of the glass is covered. Carry over the lip of the votive holder as well and be sure that the tissue paper is decoupaged against the inside of the glass.

-Allow the jars to dry overnight.

-Place a tea light candle inside each votive holder!

Take a Winter Nature Walk!

Here is a nature 'treasure hunt' and some easy and fun activities that can be done right here on base with almost no preparation:

Things to find/see:

* A tree that has lost all its leaves (deciduous)
* Buds on trees
* Something with thorns
* Fungi or moss on a tree
* An evergreen tree
* Some dormant grass or other vegetation
* A nest in a tree
* A bird

Things to feel/collect:

* A tree with rough bark
* A smooth rock
* Something slimy
* A sharp needle on a tree
* Pinecones

Related Activities:

* Paint the smooth rock, pinecones or other collected items
* Draw pictures of deciduous and evergreen trees, bark, leaves or other observed items
* Get some birdseed or bread crumbs and feed the birds

The ROK rocks

You might not have noticed that we have a great variety of rocks to check out right here on Osan Air Base. There are big ones, like the ones right out in front of Hallasan Tower, all the way down to small ones used for landscaping at Turumi, at the swimming pool, and in the little stone pagodas scattered around base. Almost all kids love rocks!

To start with, right in front of Hallasan, there are some nice big gneiss (pronounced 'nice'), which is a common metamorphic rock. You can see the mineral bands that have been curved as a result of tremendous heat and pressure inside the earth.

Also in front of Hallasan Tower are some nice chunks of igneous rocks, probably diorite. They are located around the mailbox. The benches in the entryway and the ones on the playground are made entirely of two different types of highly polished igneous rocks, probably diorite (the darker ends) and granite (the lighter bench portion).

And, don't ignore the little rocks! Pumice can be found in many places around base, like around the base of the electronic sign at Turumi. Many of these will float, at least for a little while, until the air holes fill with water. Nice smooth white Quartzite can also be found at Turumi: look near the bike racks as you come out of Rickenbackers. The smooth gray rocks in the pagodas are also probably a variety of quartzite. The small rocks are great for learning about rocks, but they also make awesome math manipulatives. Just put them back when you're done!

If you want to learn more about rocks, minerals or geology, check out these sites:

Kids OLR

Kidsgeo.com

Kidinfo.com

Fall Nature Activities around Osan

Fall has come to Korea! The pumpkins are in at the commissary, the leaves are turning color, and the gingko stinkberries are covering the ground. We are still getting some nice days to get out and get some fresh air, so take advantage of the pleasant weather while you can! It was really cold and windy by the end of October both last year and the year before.

Here are some fun ideas:

Do a fall nature walk- make a list of things to find and give each kid a bag. Even the littlest ones will love to collect things. Leaves of different colors, pinecones, bugs, and rocks are easy to find. Even stinkberries, if you're brave! Take a sketch pad and draw pictures of what you see: birds, trees that are losing their leaves, tree barks with different textures. Click here, here and here for some more ideas.

We don't have a lot of places here where we can really get outside, but here are a few you can try: the garden (located behind the hospital and in back of the PDE/School Age building), the lawn in front of Turumi, the MVV playground and surrounding areas, and the little park by the pool.

And for those days when it IS too cold to go out, get a bag of the mini-pumpkins at the commissary and let the kids go crazy decorating them with markers or poster paint, then make some hot chocolate and popcorn and enjoy the indoors!