Fun With Leaves!

Our theme for the last two weeks has been LEAVES! We've read lots of books and had all kinds of fun with leaves! Here's a glimpse of some of our activities:

Creating a Fall Fun List:

My plan was to make a large tree out of butcher paper to put in our school room. Then we would add the leaves to that. I never got around to that so we improvised. We used die-cut leaves and wrote some Fall activities that we wanted to do. Then we put them on the trees that are already in our playroom. As we do each activity, we will take the leaf off the tree. We will watch our leaves "fall" as we have Fall fun. Some activities include: hayride, roast marshmallows, visit the cabin, pumpkin patch, etc.

Leaf Art/Science:

Lexy painted some leaves to make leaf prints. We pointed out the veins in the leaves and discussed their job. Then she had fun painting her own Fall tree. Science: We read "Leaves! Leaves! Leaves!" to learn about the reason that leaves change colors. Then we picked several fresh leaves off of trees, found out what kind they were, and observed them over a period of 5 days. Each day, Lexy would color a leaf to show the changes. She would come up with words to describe it. She used words such as: smooth, crinkly, hard, crumbly, spots, etc. This was a great learning experience!

Fall Cookie Decorating:

My plans were to make leaf shaped sugar cookies and let the kids decorate them in Fall colors. However, I couldn't find my leaf cookie cutter anywhere. So, instead, we went with a general "Fall" theme. They still had fun cutting out the cookies, decorating, AND eating them. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures!

Patterns: I gave Lexy materials to make her own leaf hat. She had many small die-cut leaves and a large die-cut leaf to use on the front. She made a pattern out of the small leaves. To make it slightly more challenging, I had her make a pattern using the type of leaf rather than the color of the leaf.

Leaf Math: I printed this game off of Childcare Land. She matched simple addition problems with the answers.

PLAYING WITH LEAVES!

I wanted the kids to have a chance to play with leaves so we went to Grandma and Grandpa's house (they have LOTS more leaves than we do!).

First, they made sure the birds would have plenty to eat. Then they used their dollar store rakes to rake some leaves. They were much more excited about the rakes BEFORE we got to the raking. It only lasted a few minutes, then they were on to other things.

Of course, we had to make piles to jump and play in.

Lexy had fun making some leaf angels.

Then, we sat in some leaves and read "Leaf Man." Afterwards, we broke into teams to make our own leaf men. Here's me and Josiah sitting next to our leaf man. I was suprised out how much he was into this. He really helped to find the different parts of the body.

Here's Grandma and Lexy with their leaf man. They used leftovers from the garden to add a little character to theirs!

Leaf Rubbings

You can't do a study on leaves without doing leaf rubbings!

Song:

With each unit, we learn a poem or song that we do each day during calendar time. Our leaf song was sung to the tune of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star." As we sang it, we threw some fake leaves up in the air.

Leaves are falling all around.

Watch them fall right to the ground.

Autumn's here; it is true.

Winter's coming just for you.

Leaves are falling all around.

Falling, falling to the ground.

Book List: I was very pleased with all of these books for our study.

Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf by Lois Ehlert

Autumn Leaves by Ken Lobbias

Leaves by William Corderoy

Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert

Leaves! Leaves! Leaves! by Nancy Wallace

The Seasons - Fall by Nuria Roca

Ruby's Falling Leaves

Nature Walk/Leaf Sorting:

I still have plans to take the kids on a nature walk this weekend at a local park. We will look for leaves and sort them according to type/shape/color/edges.

We've had so much fun studying leaves. I even learned a few things, too! I'm looking forward to our pumpkin unit. To see other things that we did this week, check out this post. One major milestone was reached...Lexy began reading CVC words! Also, to see what other preschoolers are up to, be sure to check out Preschool Corner!