We had a day of learning all about leaves!

First we did some Pinecone Painting to make a fall leaf. Little Bug painted the pinecone with fall colors (red, orange & purple).

I put a yellow piece of paper on the bottom of a diaper box. Little Bug put her pinecone covered in paint in the box and rolled the pinecone around.

After the paint dried, I cut the paper into the shape of a leaf.

The pinecone looked like a beautiful fall tree!

We learned about the parts of a leaf by labeling the blade, stalk, tip and vein. I taught Little Bug that those “spikey things” are actually called “veins”. We talked about how the leaf gets water through its stalk and veins.

We went outside and found a real leaf. We found the parts of a leaf on the real leaf.

Using the leaf we found outside we did the “Leaf Observation” activity. As you can see, our leaves are still green around here so we will do this activity again when the leaves in our backyard start to change colors!

Little Bug made her own patterns using leaves, scarecrows and pumpkins.

Little Bug did a Do A Dot L is for Leaf page. She used fall colors.

Little Bug matched the leaves to its shadow. She took the green one off after doing this because she said, “This one is NOT a FALL leaf!”.

We did some Simple Leaf Subtraction by singing a cute song! I painted the tree trunk and branches on to a piece of blue paper. I cute out five leaves from various colors of construction paper and taped them to the tree.

Cinderella joined us for Learning Time this day:

We sang this song together and Little Bug would make one leaf fall to the ground every time we sang “The little leaf fell without a sound”. Then before we sang the last part, I’d have her tell me how many leaves were still on the tree and how many were on the ground. This was also a good opportunity to teach Little Bug that once all the leaves fall off the trees, the trees are bare and it is winter time.

The poem/song:

(Five) little leaves are hanging on the tree. Along came a breeze and blew one free. The little leaf fell without a sound. There are (four) on the tree and (one) on the ground.

We went outside to find fall items to make a Fall Wreath. This was sort of a joke because it certainly doesn’t look like fall around here yet!

But we managed to find some yellow leaves that had fallen, some straw, and several autumn flowers! Little Bug Cinderella enjoyed making her wreath with everything that she had found.

Little Bug’s fall wreath!

- Elaine