Autumn

Monday, November 9, 2015

Leaves, Leaves, Leaves

The last two weeks of September, we study leaves! Here are some of the things we did during these weeks.

Leaf Rubbings

We learned to make leaf rubbings with pastels, using fall colors. We tried with both rubbing plates (similar available at Oriental Trading) and with real leaves. We noticed that after the leaves had been inside for a while, they dried out and got crunchy!

Graphing Leaves

We went outside and collected a bunch of leaves, and then each chose our "favorite" leaf to graph. This was our result. We counted each category up to determine which color had the most and least leaves.

More Leaf Math

We also checked how many pennies we could fit into a leaf. Then we wrote that number, traced the pennies, recorded and compared.

Sight Word THE

We did a really cute Autumn tree project as well, fitting in some practice with our new sight word: THE. They were really excited to use a new type of paper for the tree trunk! This is more of that nature paper I love from Lakeshore Learning.

We scrunched tissue paper for leaves, which we placed on the tree and also on the ground, since they were falling down! The tree was some tricky cutting practice! Of course, we had to also sing the sight word song for THE by Have Fun Teaching.

Leaf Men

We read Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert and collected bunches of leaves to make our own leaf men.

Song List

These are the songs we enjoyed learning this month. I write them on 12 X 18 construction paper. I hate dealing with big chart paper. With the smaller paper, I can keep the songs clipped to the whiteboard to pull down whenever we need them. Then at centers time, the kids can do the same.

These songs are pretty specific to our area, and I've adapted them from other songs I've found online. The kids love them and tell me "it's stuck in my head!" In case you're wondering, akutaq (a-goo-tuck) is "eskimo ice cream." It is made of flaked cooked whitefish, various berries, crisco (or animal fat), & sugar. It's delicious :)