We recently participated in our second Nature Pal Exchange. Last year we joined in the for the holiday one. We had so much fun that I knew we would enjoy participating again. I kept an eye out and signed up in time for the fall exchange. The start aligned perfectly with our first track out for the school year giving us something to work on and keep learning.
We had fun finding items in our yard and nearby parks as well as during our recent trip to Carolina Beach. We even ended up with a few last minute items picked up following Hurricane Matthew.
There were a number of items we couldn’t include for one reason or another, but still wanted to share with our exchange family. For those, we created a small photo album. My son helped me take and select the photos for printing. Then wrote names and locations for each.
He also helped make rubbings of the trunks of 2 trees in our yard (tulip and maple) plus their leaves. And selected a few items that we pressed. I placed the latter onto a 4×6 index card and ran through my Xyron machine to laminate before adding to the photo album.
To complete the album, I created a new cover with help from my daughter. The two of us searched our backyard one afternoon for leaves to use for a painting project. After her painting dried, I cut out two 4×6 pieces to create a new front and back. This was a fun way to personalize the album and include her in its creation.
The divided box we used to contain the smaller items is from a past Kiwi Crate. Reusing it gave me the idea to do the same thing for the shipping box. I grabbed the box from one of our recent shipments and carefully filled it reusing some of the tissue paper it comes with. We packaged a few of the larger items in plastic zip top bags to help contain and cradle them during shipment.
We hope our exchange family in Washington state enjoys the little bit of North Carolina we were able to send.
Have you participated in Nature Pal Exchange or a similar program before?
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