Dear Oak,
I am round and ready. Bursting
with hope, crammed with possibilities.
I know I must drop and sleep and
sprout and grow. So Slow! But then,
Oak, I’ll stretch up my arms,
strong and true. I’ll be your
friend, the one who rises
up beside you.
Love,
Acorn
–Dear Acorn (Love, Oak) Letter Poems to Friends by Joyce Sidman
As loose parts (open-ended materials), acorns are “crammed with possibilities” of play! Here are some acorn invitations (for children old enough that acorns aren’t a choking hazard):
Use tubes, gutters, or slides and roll them! How fast and how far can you make them travel?
Use acorns to practice counting. Try labeling them with letters to make words or numbers to make equations too!
Use acorns in small world play. What different emotions can the acorns have?
Become a squirrel and sort out the ones that are hosting a weevil larva! The acorns with weevils won’t keep for winter, so the squirrels often eat them right away (with the added protein of the larva!). When the acorns fall to the ground, the weevil larvae chew their way out of their acorn, creating a perfectly round hole, and then burrow into the soil to spend the winter underground. Squirrels are thought to shake acorns to separate weevil-infested ones. You can also do a float test; an acorn with a weevil larva inside floats unlike uninfested acorns that sink.
And read about them!
