Fall for Preschoolers - Part 2

Fall week is coming to an end now (how odd since Fall has just arrived, right?) but it was filled with fun and educational activities. Here is one last look at what we've been up to during that timeframe.

Outdoor Play - Math Mushroom hunting in the yard

One of the favorite activities this week was the mushroom backyard hunting. Hidden on the grass and especially close to tree roots and plants were 11 little wooden mushrooms I hand painted (these are about 1in wide and are in fact wooden drawer pulls purchased unfinished on etsy.com from a seller named ClickityClack who also does wooden toys and such). Each polka dot mushroom had a different quantity of white dots (ranging from 0 to 10). Adrian's job was to find all 11 of them and put them in his basket. At the end, I asked him to order them from 0 to 10 on our table but of course, we had to hunt for mushrooms several times before we got to that math part! :)

Art -Thumbprint Fall Tree

Another well loved activity was this bare tree outfitted with thumb-made leaves! We had no orange paint so Adrian helped make this beautiful orange you see. Adrian loves activities involving paint so he was excited to see all the colors on the table today. The tree was printed from Created by Spark who designed the tree for the new hip trend of thumbprint wedding guest books.

Science - Botany - Parts of a Tree

Well since we are talking about how trees start to change in the fall, I figured we might as well discuss their parts too! ("Parts of a leaf" will come later during Leaves Week.) We first discussed the parts thanks to Exploring Nature's handout and then proceeded to color only one part per page in our little Parts of a Tree book. Adrian knew all the parts except for "Trunk" which he called "bark. Can't blame him. There is bark on the trunk and that is what I explained. ;) To make our Parts of a Tree booklet, I printed one tree per page using a picture found on Montessori for Everyone.

Math - How many Acorns did this Squirrel Eat?

Working with natural items is always a favorite of Adrian. For this activity, I supplied 8 squirrel cards printed from a grid game found on PreKinders and then wrote a number in between 0 and 10 on each card. Adrian then had to put the right number of acorn caps with the squirrel who had eaten that many. At the end, no caps were left in the bowl. He thought it was funny that some squirrels had not eaten at all while some ate eight nuts! :)

Fine Motor - Literacy - Clothespins and Which Apple basket is different?

A mix of good observation and fine motor for this fall themed activity. Adrian first had to look attentively at each card (you can find them on PreKinders) to see which fall picture was different on each and then put a clothespin on that one. These clothespins (from my local grocery store) being smaller, they gave him much less trouble than the big ones I use on my clothesline and well...aren't they just the cutest?