October is, for our youngest Skrzaty group (two- and three-year-olds), a special month — one of the most beautiful in the whole year. Every morning they bring to preschool, in small bags, in the pockets of snowsuits, in candy boxes, tiny treasures they found with mum or grandma along the way. Most often these are chestnuts — smooth, brown, shiny. Or acorns. Or particularly pretty leaves. Each such find ends up in our Skrzaty Treasure Room and becomes material for afternoon play.
In this article we want to tell you how our Skrzaty work with the gifts of autumn, what specifically is built in a two-year-old’s brain when they collect, sort, arrange and process natural materials, and why this seemingly simple autumn activity is one of the most powerful developmental tools in the whole preschool calendar.
What “the gifts of autumn” are and why they are so valuable
In our pedagogical jargon we use the term “gifts of autumn” for all natural materials that are easy to find at this time of year on Warsaw pavements, in parks, in forests. Chestnuts. Acorns. Beechnuts. Pinecones. Colourful leaves. Dried grasses. Pieces of bark. Sticks. Sometimes there are also fruits — wild apples, pumpkins, rowanberries.
Each of these materials has qualities no factory product has. They are unique — every chestnut is different. They are naturally available — you don’t have to buy them. They are sensorily safe — cool, smooth, naturally scented. They are easy to manipulate — they fit a child’s hand. And — most importantly — they carry a story. Every chestnut once grew on a tree. Every acorn is the seed of an oak. Every leaf was green, and now is brown, red, yellow.
For a two-year-old’s brain, contact with these materials is one of the strongest lessons about nature that exists. Not through a chart. Not through a fairy tale. Through their own hand, their own eyes, their own sense of smell.
What actually happened in our Skrzaty room
One October afternoon we spread a large tarpaulin in the middle of the room. We poured onto it the entire contents of our Treasure Room — chestnuts, acorns, leaves, pinecones. The tarpaulin became a lake of treasures. Each Skrzat sat on the edge and looked.
The first ten minutes were just looking and touching. The Skrzaty spontaneously began to reach for chestnuts, look at them, turn them in their hands, feel their smoothness. They picked the most beautiful ones. Sometimes they put two in a fist and compared the weight. Sometimes they listened to the chestnuts knocking against each other. Sometimes they came up to an adult and showed them: “look, so smooth!”.
What was happening here was the purest form of sensory exploration — the first, deepest way in which a child’s brain gets to know the world. Each tactile stimulus, each weight comparison, each chestnut click — for a two-year-old’s brain these are concrete data. From these data an understanding of the world is built.
The second phase was sorting. The teacher placed three bowls on the table: for chestnuts, for acorns, for pinecones. “Skrzaty, help us arrange the treasures”. The Skrzaty leapt up and began collecting. Each picked one, looked at it, decided which bowl to put it in. Some Skrzaty hesitated — is this round chestnut by chance an acorn? Is this pinecone really a pinecone, or maybe something else? Each such decision is, for a three-year-old’s brain, a small problem to solve. From hundreds of such problems adult categorical thinking is later built.
The third phase was counting. “And how many chestnuts do we have in the bowl?”. “Let’s count together!”. The Skrzaty spontaneously began to count — some correctly to ten, others stopped at three or four. The counting did not have to be perfect. What mattered was that the Skrzat put their own effort into counting concrete, tangible objects. This works for the brain quite differently from abstract finger counting.
Fourth phase — art. Each Skrzat got plasticine, chestnuts, acorns, bits of straws and made a hedgehog from them. A chestnut as the body, straws stuck into its shell as spines, plasticine as the base to which everything sticks. This is the classic Polish preschool ritual — a hedgehog from a chestnut — that has worked for generations, because it combines everything a two-year-old needs: fine motor skills (sticking the straws), creativity, a finished result (the hedgehog), reference to Polish literary tradition.
Fifth phase — the bouquet. The Skrzaty arranged the most beautiful leaves into bouquets — each making their own, in plastic bowls, decorated with chestnuts. These bouquets were taken home in the evening and adorned family tables for several weeks. Grandmothers melted. Mothers photographed. Fathers praised. Each of these glances cemented in the Skrzat’s head: “what I made is beautiful and important”.
What is built in a two-year-old’s brain during such play
Tactile sensory development. Every contact with natural texture — the smooth shell of a chestnut, the rough surface of an acorn, the rustling dry leaf — is for a two-year-old’s skin a strong signal. A signal that reaches the brain and is encoded in tactile memory. The more varied textures, the better the touch receptors develop.
Fine motor skills. Grasping chestnuts (the pincer grip), sticking straws into plasticine (force control), arranging leaves (precision), threading acorns onto a string (eye-hand coordination) — all these activities train the fingers in a way no worksheet can replace. The same fingers that in a few years will hold a pen.
First cognitive categories. Sorting chestnuts, acorns and pinecones is, for a two-year-old, a first, primitive lesson in classification — the foundation of all thinking. “These are chestnuts. These are acorns. They are not the same thing”. From such first distinctions the entire ability for abstract thinking is later built.
First mathematical concepts. Counting concrete objects, comparing quantities (“I have more than you”), noticing changes (how the bowl fills up) — these are first, embodied experiences of mathematics. Far from formal counting, but absolutely fundamental.
Aesthetics. Choosing the most beautiful leaf. Deciding how to arrange the bouquet. The sense that one chestnut is “prettier” than another. These are the first aesthetic decisions a person makes in life. From them, an adult sense of beauty — and love for nature — is later built.
A connection with the season. Chestnuts, acorns, colourful leaves — these are symbols of autumn. A Skrzat who plays with these symbols throughout October builds a deep association of “season — autumn — these objects”. From such associations grows the adult sense of life’s cyclicality, of the seasonal diversity of the world.
What a parent can do at home
Autumn is the best opportunity to get the child used to collecting, observing and processing natural materials. A few easy ideas:
— Daily walks “with a mission”. “Today we are looking for the most beautiful chestnut”. “Today we will find five acorns”. “Today we will gather leaves of three different colours”. Every walk with a mission is ten times more interesting for a child than “let’s go for a stroll”.
— A home “autumn treasure box”. A plastic box with a lid is enough. Each day the child adds what they have found. After a few weeks the box is full — and becomes great material for home art projects.
— Drying leaves in a book. A classic. A few colourful leaves between the pages of an old book, a heavy book placed on top, two weeks of waiting. After taking them out — the leaves are flat, ready to be framed. You can then stick them to a sheet of paper and make autumn decorations.
— A chestnut hedgehog. One of the simplest home art projects. A piece of plasticine as a base. A chestnut as the hedgehog’s body. Straws, toothpicks, short sticks stuck into the chestnut’s shell as spines. Twenty minutes of work, satisfaction for a whole week.
— A string of acorns. Under a parent’s supervision you can make a small hole in the acorns with a needle and thread them onto a string. A necklace or a garland is created. A training in patience and precision.
— Talk about nature. “Where did this chestnut come from?”. “And why are the leaves turning yellow?”. “And where do the acorns go when they fall?”. Each such question is an opportunity for a mini-biology and ecology lesson. You don’t have to know all the answers. What matters is to ask.
What stayed from our day with the gifts of autumn
After our sorting, art projects and bouquets, at the end of the day each Skrzat went home with a chestnut hedgehog, an autumn bouquet and full pockets. Some Skrzaty in the evening confided to parents: “the teacher said we are helping the hedgehogs not stay hungry”. (Because we also told the legend that chestnuts help hedgehogs survive the winter. This is not entirely true — chestnuts are inedible to hedgehogs — but for a two-year-old let it be such a first version of this story. Next year we will correct it.)
And this is exactly our philosophy. The Skrzaty live in an interesting, dense, colourful world, in which a chestnut is not only a chestnut — it is also a hedgehog and an acorn, and a friend, and a gift from autumn. From such a world later grows an adult who is delighted by an autumn park even in the rain, who notices small changes in nature during a walk, who does not forget what the autumns of their childhood looked like. Autumn as a season stays in them forever — deeply, warmly, with the smell of wet leaves and a shiny chestnut in the pocket.
And it all began with one simple question from the teacher: “who wants to go for treasures?”.
And there was only one answer: “yeeees!”.