The Leaves are Falling!

Autumn is by far the best season ever! The weather is chilly, but not too cold. The foliage is amazing, too. Then there are all of the great fall activities that we love to do like apple picking and hiking. We have focused on nature and the seasons this year, so we’ve read many books about fall so far. There is a downfall to this great season, though. The raking that needs to be done is a huge burden for us. Our yard is surrounded by our neighbors’ trees, and all of those leaves fall into our yard. That means lots of work for us in the autumn. My hubby and I decided to make a little game out of it with the kids, and it turned out to be a great teaching opportunity.

We had the kids walk around the yard and put leaves into their buckets to put them leaves into our compost pile. As they were doing this, they noticed that the leaves were not all the same. Daddy showed them what a maple leaf looks like. We have two other kinds of leaves in our backyard, oak leaves and another one that we didn’t recognize. Daddy suggested that the kids walk around the yard and sort the maple, oak, and unidentified leaves. They emptied the sorted leaves into the compost pile, and on our way back into the house, I brought several leaves inside for an art project. When we got inside, we found an interactive website at About.com to help us identify the last leaf and discovered it was an elm. Then I had the kids sort the leaves into oak, elm, and maple leaf piles. Then we used the leaves to make collages of the different types of leaves. The kids were so excited about this project from start to finish, and we all had a lot of fun!

I liked a lot about these particular activities. One thing that stands out is the kinesthetic nature of the work. The kids sorted the leaves in a very active way by collecting them in the yard, and then they re-sorted them when we got inside. I was able to show the kids how they can research on the internet as well. I also like the visual and tactile piece that came with making the collages. The kids manipulated the leaves in order to make their collages, and touching the leaves in this way gave them a clearer picture of the shape of each type of leaf. They also have these art pieces to refer to now to remind them what the different types of leaves look like. In the end, they will remember how to identify these leaves particular leaves in the future.

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