In Australia we have just experienced a really warm Autumn (Fall) season. It is always one of my favourite times of the year because the leaves are always so spectacular and it can feel like they are changing colour right before your eyes. It also opens up doors for great learning opportunities.
My adorable niece and I thought we would go exploring and find some leaves we thought were particularly beautiful. It was tough because there were so many we could choose from.
Learning involved
Exploring the environment can be a great way to teach children about the changing of seasons and provides children with an opportunity to make observations whilst opening them up to making discussions, which further helps with language development.
Here is our collection of leaves. My niece notes the various colours, sizes and shapes!
- ‘How many brown leaves can you collect in 2 minutes’ (counting)
- ‘Order these leaves from smallest to largest’ (ordering and measurement)‘
- ‘Which leaf would cover the largest/smallest area?’ (area)
I think it’s also important to give children freedom to take their learning where they want it to go. Here I simply supplied my niece with a black pen and allowed her to be creative.
Just look at her wonderful and creative drawings!! I really love that she has considered the shape of the leaves, using it as a frame for her picture. Brilliant!!!! We extended this activity by using the leaves in imaginative play and writing a stories.
Here she is tracing over the veins of the leaf.
“Wow, I can’t believe how many veins this leaf has!’ said my niece.
I love when children are surprised by their own discoveries.
Lovely post Kate !! I loved all the ideas in it. Just need a kid big enough to try it on 🙂
Thank you very much for commenting Zahra! So glad you enjoyed reading this. No doubt your little boy will be doing such activities soon.
We have been collecting leaves also, though none of ours are as nice as yours. I love your idea to draw on them, they look wonderful. I am going to suggest this to Cakes and see what creativity she can come up with. Thank you for the great idea!
Thanks Jay. It’s all about giving them the opportunity so I hope you get a chance to let me know how little Cakes goes with maybe drawing on some leaves. My niece found it great fun.
What a gorgeous post Kate. Love it!!
Thank you Debs. I think I’m starting to find my groove. LOL
We love autumn here too. Love walking in the crisp air and running in the leaves. It’s so beautiful, isn’t it? I’m really looking forward to seeing Jack and Sarah when they are this age and the creative adventures they get up to 🙂
Absolutely. Autumn would be one of my favourite times of the year. With a great mum like you your Jack and Sarah will no doubt be having lots of great adventures.
I like the leaf drawing. Very creative!
Such a sweet post, I love the array of colours in fallen leaves 🙂
Thanks for sharing
Thank you so much for commenting Rez. It was a great post to write and my niece enjoyed the experience so much that it felt quite effortless. What a beautiful collection of leaves around our area. 🙂
I love it! Pinning it now.
Thank you very kindly Erin. I appreciate the comment and that you like it enough to share it with others. 🙂
Beautiful! 🙂 This post is just amazing! Love the images and all that Autumn brings on! 🙂 x
It is one of my favourite times of the year. The leaves we found were amazing!!!
Loving autumn, will be doing some of these great leaves activities with the little ones at work.
Wonderful to hear thank you Nathalie. I hope you are well.
What a beautiful activity, oh and I love the questions you posed too, they were really cool. I can imagine Miss Poss scrambling to get as many leaves in two minutes as she could. That would be soo fun to see!
It turns it into a physical activity too! LOL
I’d be really puffed.
Such lovely pics…made me feel glad we are in Autumn!!So many wonderful learning activities from a simple little leaf..Wish we had all of those colours here xx
We were very lucky to find the wonderful leaves that we did. It’s nice they aren’t too far from home.
Do you know what kind of tree your favorite is? We have Eucalyptus trees growing around our property and it always makes me feel like I’m in Australia. What great ideas for kids.
Oh that is a really terrific question Patricia. I’m not very good at knowing the names of trees and other plants. I was thinking it is an elm but I could be wrong. You have me very curious. Thanks. 🙂
Eucalyptus trees are wonderful. Have you tried to play their leaves like a kazoo?
Autumn is such a beautiful time of year. It always brings back fond memories of going to the park with my mum when I was a little tacker, and we would kick and crunch the leaves. Playing with leaves is great fun, I really like the drawings on the leaves 🙂
Thank you Kelly. I loved to do running jumps into leaves when I was small. Such great memories.
Cammy is currently obsess with collecting leaves while I put Ike into his car seat. I’ll have to time her next time and see how many she can collect.
P.S. Your blog is looking amazing.
P.P.S. Thanks for adding Name/Url- so much easier to comment now
Thank you so much for your lovely comments Jackie. You have been a massive help.
So many good ideas for autumn. As we are just heading into summer here, I will tuck away all these ideas for September when the leaves start changing here. 🙂
Great idea! We are in winter at the moment and the leaves will no doubt start to bud soon after.
LOVE this!! Thanks for linking to Share it Saturday. I featured you this morning 🙂
That tree is beautiful! What a great idea to draw on the leaves. I love the one with the little man on it and how wonderful drawing over the leaf veins like that. Pinning this to do with R this week.
Hey! Kate!!!!thanks for the amazing post! We played falling leaves today in our preschool . The kids had sommuch crazy time 🙂
That’s so wonderful Mian! Thanks for sharing. 🙂
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