Fall for Preschoolers - Part 2

Playing in the leaves is fun. I think most of us have done it at some point in our lives. Kids are especially fascinated by the leaves crunching under their feet and so I decided to take Adrian and Zahavah out for some playtime in the leaves. Needless to say, it was a BIG hit and it was repeated most everyday. Before heading out, I had made a list of things to do for Adrian. 

Outdoor Play with Leaves

Action List for fun in the Leaves

1.  Rake the leaves into a pile

2. Jump into the pile of leaves

3. Throw some of the leaves in the air

4. Shuffle the leaves with your feet to make a path

5. Bury yourself in the leaves

6. Catch a falling leaf

7. Dump leaves onto a friend (with permission)

8. Smell the leaves

9. Hear the leaves crunching under your feet

10. Roll in the leaves

Success. Adrian did it all and particularly loved numbers 2,3,6 and 7.

Fine Motor - Toothpick Punching a Leaf

First time we ever did any toothpick punching and it was a blast. I took a small piece of styrofoam, printed a small leaf, stabilized it on the styrofoam and showed Adrian how to punch through it. He did well and was patient in punching all over the leaf margin and veins.

Fine Motor - "Dot to Dot" onto Styrofoam

To show Adrian his good punching skills, we removed the leaf once he was finished and I asked him to traced all over the small holes in the styrofoam. He was so impressed to see a leaf appear! Drawing on styrofoam is more difficult than on regular paper of course so it required extra dexterity. If you want to use the same leaf, check out Big Activities.

How Many Leaves?

To play how many leaves left on the tree, we used dice and leaves stickers. Adrian loves stickers and peeling them off the "clear" sheets is quite a fine motor activity sometimes. To accomplish this activity, roll one die per tree and stick the numbers of leaves your die indicates. I printed the tree sheet using Wallstory-murals' graphic.

Fall Leaves Scavenger Hunt

I prepared this little hunting game one night. I'm always looking for ideas of activities to do outside while the weather still holds. Adrian loves "hunts" so I thought he'd like it and he sure did. We were able to find all these in our yard (not necessarily the same variety but the colors...)

To print your own copy of this hunt, contact me and I'll e-mail you one. 

Leaf graphing

So we collected some leaves thanks to our leaf scavenger hunt and I added a few to the bag so we could make this nice graph. I asked Adrian to count the leaves of each color and to fill in the squares as needed using the markers. The grid was printed from E Is For Explore.

Leaves printing

Once our graph was completed, we used the leaves for a printmaking exercise. Adrian painted one side of the leaf with fall colored paint, turned them over and then pressed them on the paper. I provided only yellow, red and green paint. Adrian made him own orange and we then proceeded to mix the red, yellow and green together. To Adrian's delight, brown was created. Just THE perfect color for fall leaves. Please keep in mind that the best prints are made using a minimum of paint and by painting the veinous side of the leaf (aka the back/uncolored side).