Books
We borrowed these books from the library this week. Why Do Leaves Change Color? was a little bit advanced for them, Little M&M in particular, but the others were adorable. We read them over and over this week. Highly, highly recommend.
Quiet Bins
Here is our leaf-themed bin for the week:
Inside it were the following activities:
- leaf coloring pages with markers
- a leaf q-tip painting template with giant pushpins (great fine motor practice) to be completed on a rug of course
- a leaf stamp and ink pad with paper
- our leaf felt board, scaled down to fit on a tray
- a fall tree dot marker page with fall colored dot markers
- a roll and cover game I created, with two dice and acrylic leaves
Here's one for you to grab:
And here is our non-themed bin for the week:
It contained:
- cutting practice worksheets and scissors
- our Tell Tale card game, with a template I made, for storytelling
- the geoboard
- a puzzle
- a Cars magnetic toy
Leaf Walk + Identifying Leaves
I printed a great leaf identification chart from iMom today. While Honey Pot was at school, Little M&M and I took advantage of an unseasonably warm morning and took a leaf walk. He carried a sand bucket and we tried to find as many different kinds of leaves as we could on our street.
When the wind blew we loved to stop and listen to the leaves falling, and watch them drift to the ground.
When we got back to our house, we pulled out the chart and tried to identify the types of leaves we found. While some of them were of similar shape, Little M&M was able to determine that they came from different trees, because of their textures.
It was super fun!
Later in the week, on a much cooler day, we went back out with Honey Pot to find a new batch of leaves to identify.
We had a lot of success, and the kids had fun trying to match them up to the chart.
Light Box
We put together our light box again this week. Remember the fun we had when we first made one for Little M&M's L is for Light theme? This time I set it up with our acrylic leaves, clear plastic cups and some small sticks that I had them gather during our leaf walk.
First Little M&M sorted the leaves by color:
then he started pouring them back and forth between all the cups:
and finally he set up some sticks to make trees:
Then Honey Pot started to play. She made a tree with lots of branches:
And a HUGE pile of leaves at the bottom, lol:
Then, without my prompting, she gathered them all up into plastic cups, and arranged them from emptiest to fullest:
Sweeping Skills
I scattered the leaves onto the floor, and offered for the kids to help sweep them up. They are great helpers, so they have a lot of experience doing this already. But they still jumped at the chance.
Decorating Leaf Cookies
We hosted a football party this week! It was an all day affair, and there were six kids present who don't watch football. So I decided to bake some cookies, using leaf cookie cutters, and have the kids decorate them as a way to break up their day of free play. I followed a recipe from Bake at 350 for brown sugar and spice cookies and they were SO delicious!! I set the table, using a vinyl tablecloth for easy cleanup. At each space I set out a plate, a plastic knife, homemade cookie icing, leaf sprinkles in a small dish and mini M&Ms in a small dish. Also on each half of the table were solid colored sprinkles, in fall colors, for the kids to share. The kids varied in age from 3-6 and they all did a super job!
Here are the finished cookies ready to eat! Mmm!
Leaf Pile Play
And of course, we had a giant pile of leaves to entertain the kiddos as well.
We love fall!
And please take a look at our previous autumn themes:
