We had great fun playing in fall leaves, just like in the book, Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf by Lois Ehlert.
One of our sensory bins was filled with fall leaves, acorns and pine cones. We were told a story about some acorn people who lived in the forest. We had little acorn people to play with. We made houses for them with the leaves and pine cones.
We used child-sized rakes to take turns raking up leaves that had "blown" to the ground.
As we raked them up we sang to the tune of "London Bridges":
Autumn leaves are falling down,
falling down, falling down.
Autumn leaves are falling down.
To the ground.
Use a rake to pick them up,
Pick them up, pick them up.
Use a rake to pick them up,
From the ground.
Just like in the book, The Biggest Leaf Pile
by Steve Metzger,
we jumped into our pile of leaves and they went flying everywhere!
To the tune, "Colors of the Wind", we used colorful scarves to dance and move like leaves blowing in the wind...
Fall stamps, cookie cutters and buttons, made playing with our fall-colored playdough extra fun.
We went on a hunt through the neighborhood for leaves that fell from trees. We found a lot of them! Different shapes, sizes, textures and colors of leaves were added to a bag to take back to school for leaf printing and investigating. What gorgeous fall weather we had for our excursion.
When we got back to school, we painted the backs of our leaves with chosen fall colors, placed them on our art paper, covered them with another piece of paper and then used a brayer to roll over the top in order to "print" our leaf onto our papers. They are simple, yet so beautiful.
Guess who we are pretending to be?
Nuts to You! by Lois Ehlert is one of our favorite books here at school. It's about a sneaky squirrel who digs in window pots, steals seeds from the birds, and begs for a treat at an apartment window. Through a tear in the screen, the rascal sneaks inside for a look around. The narrator leaves a trail of peanuts and the words, "nuts to you" to lure it out of the house.
We read The Chipmunk Song by Joanne Ryder and Frederick by Leo Leonni. The little creatures in these books (well, all but Frederick- he was busy collecting other things) scampered about in the fall leaves, collecting food and getting ready for winter.
We collected peanuts outside and put them in a bag (because we don't have little pouches in our cheeks!), just as squirrels and chipmunks collect food like berries and nuts in the fall and put it in their burrows or nests, to get ready for the long winter ahead.
As we searched we sang, "Found a Peanut".
Found a peanut, found a peanut
found a peanut, just now.
Just now I found a peanut,
Found a peanut, just now.
Cracked it open,
Cracked it open, just now.
Just now, I cracked it open,
Cracked it open, just now!
Squirrels never seem to disappoint!
After about our third peanut hunt, we left some of our peanuts on the front porch while we went inside to play. It wasn't long before a sneaky squirrel crept into our play yard to steal some of our peanuts.
When he saw us watching him, he scurried up into the tree. We retaliated with a resounding,
"NUTS TO YOU!"
Fall is in the air!
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