We went on one of my favorite fall outings today!  Armed with a great book, some craft supplies, and a pile of snacks, we headed up the canyon near our house to explore fall in one of its best displays!

After throwing rocks and leaves in the river for a while (an activity you simply can’t skip over with my boys)  we gathered with some friends to read Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert.  I really enjoy sharing this book with children!  The illustrations are all made up of photocopied leaves.  It’s a fantastic creative collage approach that really gets kids thinking outside of the box.  After the story, we went for a little hike to gather some of our favorite leaves and bring them back to our picnic spot to create our own leaf pictures. 

Using black cardstock as a background, similar to the dark background in the book, the children arranged their collections of leaves.  Some made people, others created monsters, while some simply arranged their colorful collections.  Once they were all in place, we sealed them down with a layer of contact paper.  The black background really makes those fall colors pop!  And as long as the leaves are dry, the contact paper seals them in, preserving them for years!  (You can read more about what I wrote on this activity here.  Apologies for the sub-par photo!)

And of course, we had to cap the activity off with some fall treats!  There are some snacks I just have to make every time the fall season rolls around, and gingersnaps are one of them!  Try a batch for yourself (the recipe’s at the bottom), and serve them up with some apple cider.  If you could taste fall, it would taste like this!

What are your favorite fall treats?

Soft Gingersnaps

1 1/2 cups sugar

3 eggs

3/4 cup molasses

1 1/2 cup oil

1 1/2 tsp. salt

1 1/2 tsp. cloves

3 tsp. ginger

3 tsp. cinnamon

3 tsp. soda

6 cups flour

Mix the sugar, eggs, molasses, and oil.  Then add in the salt, soda, and spices and mix well.  (Or for you Martha Stewarts out there, go ahead and sift the salt, soda, and spices with your flour.  I’m just not that ambitious!)  Gradually add the flour and mix until a consistent dough forms.  Form into  balls and roll in sugar.  Place on a cookie sheet and flatten slightly with a glass.  Bake at 350 for about 8 minutes.  Makes about 4 dozen large cookies.

Top photo by silgluck.

Afterward, have the children create their own colorful fall trees.  First smock up!  Once each child has a piece of paper on an art tray to work with, have each one take a brush, and with brown paint make the trunk and branches of their trees.  Talk about the difference between the straight lines of the trunk and the curving, climbing, intertwining branches at the top.

Once everyone is done with the brown, bring in red, orange, and yellow finger paints – one at a time – and have the children dip their fingers into the paint and onto the paper to create small, falling leaves!  (I usually use washable tempera paint for fingerpaint, and pour it into leftover plastic lids.  The ridges help to keep the paint from spilling over.  Painting is a great creative as well as fine motor experience for children.  Adding fingerpaint also makes it a sensory experience.  Here are some child samples:

(All of these samples show a two-stroke tree trunk, but a single stroke would do the job as well!)

Enjoy Red Leaf Yellow Leaf with your little ones!

For more favorite fall activities, click here!

This is one of my favorite activities!  Help your child take a leaf and place it between two strips of muslin or other white, cotton fabric.  Together, hammer the muslin with a rubber mallet.  As the mallet strikes the leaf, the chlorophyll is released from the leaf and absorbed by the fabric.  Colored leaves in the fall work also as long as they have not become too dry (though their red and purple colors come from a type of sugar in the tree instead of chlorophyll.  Check out this website  for more science information about fall leaves.) 

When I’m talking with children as they do this activity, I mention that the leaves are holding the color inside, kind of like a water balloon.  When those balloons are hit, they break and the color comes out onto the fabric. 

This experience builds science knowledge while also providing a large motor activity.  Obviously, with all the pounding, this activity can be noisy, and it requires enough room for safely swinging the mallet.  Outside is ideal!  That way, the children can also search for their leaves as they wait for a turn.

Find more about trees and leaves at the fall favorites page!

Whichever type of parachute you use, begin by explaining that it is very important for the children to listen carefully, follow directions, and work together to make the parachute activities work.  Start out with the parachute spread out on the floor.  Have the children find a handle and pull the parachute out flat.  Have everyone slowly touch their toes, then stretch up to the sky.  You could also have them all turn to their left and do a variety of locomotor moves (walk, tip-toe, hop, etc.) to make the parachute spin.  Then practice shaking the parachute.  First softly and slowly, then more quickly and wildly.  Practice intermittent stopping to check for listening and control. 

Once you feel the children are getting the hang of the directions, tell them you are all going to be moving the parachute like the wind.  Sometimes the wind is calm, soft and slow (move parachute accordingly), sometimes it is wild and fast, and sometimes it stops altogether.  Now, in the fall, something very interesting happens when the wind blows.  The leaves fall from the trees and dance in the wind! 

Having the children hold the parachute still, place some leaves in the center of the parachute (I used artificial leaves so they can be reused throughout the month).  Have the children move the leaves about in the wind by moving the parachute as before.  They will have to listen very closely to your signals and work together.  As the wind blows gently, the leaves should stay on the parachute.  Stronger winds will send the leaves flying and the children giggling!  After a big stormy, strong wind, stop and have the children “rake” up the leaves that have blown off of the parachute.  The children will love doing this activity over and over again!

After a parachute activity, you can easily transition to circle time.  Have the children stretch the parachute out flat  and and then sit down.  Have the children set the parachute down and you pick it up from the center.  Abra-cadabra, the kiddos are already in perfect circle formation for the next activity!  You may want to follow up with the Autumn Leaves Song and a great book like Leaf Man.

For more favorite fall activities, click here!

Here’s a song you probably already know, but just in case you don’t I’ll share it with you!  It’s so simple and perfect for the season.  As we sing, I have the children float their hands back and forth down to the ground like falling leaves.  Here’s the song:

Autumn Leaves (tune: London Bridges)

Autumn leaves are falling down

Red, gold, and brown,

Down to the ground!

Autumn leaves are falling down,

We love autumn!

I usually precede this song by talking about the fall season, and the fact that it’s also called autumn.  We talk about the changing leaves and look at a few colorful samples from outside.  I also like to bring in some needles from an evergreen tree to compare and discuss.  Also, other fun tree items to examine in this discussion are acorns, Maple tree seeds (helicopter seeds), and nests (if you happen to find an abandoned one).

This song and discussion builds science knowledge about seasons, cycles of living things, and characteristics of trees.  Singing is also a great language builder and promote phonological awareness!

This song also goes very nicely with the leaf parachute activity  I’ll be posting soon!!!

For more favorite fall activities, click here!

Top photo by porah.

Before reading this book with children, it’s a good idea to practice the text first, so that you can read it aloud smoothly and with the right “em-PHA-sis on the right syll-A-ble”, as my mom always says.  Also, while reading this story, it’s really helpful to point to each letter in the illustrations as it is introduced in the story, reinforcing to the child the letter shape and letter name.

After reading this book, it’s great to have children make their own Chicka Chicka Boom Boom trees.  Preparation for this activity is really simple!  First, I turn a sheet of construction paper on its side, so that I’m cutting shorter strips rather than longer strips.  I curve them a bit as I go so that they look a bit like the bending coconut tree trunk.  I’d say I cut them about 1-1 1/2 inches wide.  (There’s no scientific formula here.)  You could even pile a couple papers on top of each other if you need a lot of trunks!  Next, I cut zig-zag leaves from two different colors of green paper.  Again, there’s no pattern,  I just cut in a zig-zag, make a point at the end, and then zig zag back.

Provide these pieces, along with self-adhesive foam letters, sheets of paper for the background, as well as glue sticks for putting it all together.  Have the children select and attach a trunk, then several leaves.  Then have them get some letters to climb up the tree!  Talk about the letters as they choose them.  Label them and compare them (the letters, not the children ).  “That’s an M, just like at the beginning of Matt’s name!  Oh, that R looks a lot like Peter’s P, but it has an extra “leg”.”  Some children will point out the letters in their names, others will want to match ”Mamas and Babies”.  One of my own sons even decided not to put any letters on because “they already fell out.”  That’s OK too.  He’s showing story comprehension, and we could still talk about some of the letters as he played with them, he just didn’t want any on his tree.

Almost inevitably, when you’re letting children place random letters on a project, you’ll end up with some unintentional spellings.  If the word is something they will get excited about or something you think they spelled intentionally, point it out (“Hey, you spelled cat!” “I think you almost spelled your whole name here!”) .  However, there are times to ignore spellings and recognize them for the random arrangement they were intended to be.  I’m sure you can think of plenty of examples, and trust me, it does happen.  Don’t discourage their innocent effort by removing their letters.  Just accept it as a random accident, that doesn’t need to be turned into something else by pointing it out.

So enjoy one of the best books for preschoolers and create your own Chicka Chicka Boom Boom tree to go with it!

For more favorite fall activities, click here!

So here are the supplies I suggest for a camping dramatic play area.  PLEASE let me know what you like to add!

• A tent, of course!  I used a play tent here, but I’ve also used a real dome tent in larger areas or outside.
• Backpacks – stocked with blankets, flashlights, old cell phones, compasses, binoculars, and play food.
• Location, location, location!  Add something to make your woodsy retreat.  If you’re setting up outside, great!  You’re done!  Here I used a tree prop.  It’s made from a large cardboard box (from a car seat, I think), opened on one side and then folded out into a large strip.  These folds make it much easier to store.  I tape up fall leaves, apples, and anything else I may need to make a more specific tree.  You can’t see the color much in this photo, but I colored the canopy of the tree using three crayons in different shades of green, holding all three at once, and drawing curly cues all around.
• Reading Resources.  You may add some field guides, or nonfiction animal books for the campers to use to identify their furry and feathered neighbors.
• Characters.  With my son’s request, I also added a bear puppet.  You may want to add other animals as puppets, stuffed toys, murals, or even birds suspended from the ceiling if you’re that ambitious!

Dramatic play encourages symbolic thinking, a necessary skill for reading.  Also, social and language skills grow by leaps and bounds as they negotiate and implement roles and plots.  (To learn more about dramatic play, click here!)  Camping is a great dramatic play theme for many nature units, including trees and leaves, fall, and animals.

What would you add to this camping props list?

For more favorite fall activities, click here!

Top photo by porah.

If you’re doing a study of trees, here’s a math activity to get your kids going.  It could be used as an independent game, at your working tables for example, or you could easily use it as an extension activity after any number of fantastic tree books.  Now, I’m going to share two things with you.  The first is this set of tree sorting cards.  Just click on the link below, and then click on the document icon to be connected to the PDF.  (The file is yours to use as an educational tool, not for sale or gain, of course.  And, as with other resources here on this site, please please share, but please please cite www.notjustcute.com as your source.) 

Tree Sort and Series Cards

 Now, I told you I was going to share TWO things with you.  The set of tree cards is the first.  The second, is the fact that I am not and never have been an art major!  So,  please excuse my quick drawings of trees.  I’m sure many of you could make a much better set, and you have my blessings to do so!  These do seem to do the job though.  So far, I haven’t had any children ask me what they’re supposed to do with the mushrooms!

These cards may seem self-explanatory, but I’ll explain anyway, because I’m known for stating the obvious.  Once these cards are printed, cut, and laminated if you wish, mix them up, providing one card of each set to a child to sort out and find all the trees that look similar and put them in a group.  (If you can’t tell, there’s an apple tree, a regular tree….you could call it Maple if you want to, a pine tree, and a palm tree.)  Once the cards are sorted into groups, have the children put them in ascending order, smallest to tallest.  Some children can do this right away, others need to be coached through it (“Which one is the smallest?  Put it here.  Which one is the biggest?  That goes over here. …..”)  If you’re working with very young children, you may want to omit one card from each set, so that you just have small, medium, and large.  That makes it easier to make comparisons.

This activity could obviously be done at a table or on the floor, but if you have a pocket chart, the kiddos always love the chance to use the “teacher’s stuff”.

This activity builds math skills  as the children sort based on characteristics and compare the cards in order to place them in ascending order.  Vocabulary is expanded also as you use comparative words, such as big, bigger, biggest, and other words for size (small, short, tall, etc.).

You could also create a similar activity, using actual leaves from different types of trees.  Get a small, medium, and large sample of each one, and let your little ones sort them out and then arrange them in a series!

For more favorite fall activities, click here!

Top photo by Izabelha.

If you’re lucky enough, you have childhood memories of digging through fallen leaves, twigs, and dirt to find treasure troves of bugs and creepy crawlies.  Hopefully the children you love and teach get the same opportunity!  Here’s a way to extend that fun into a  sensory table  activity.

The title describes it all!  In your sensory table, place sawdust, leaves (real would be great, I just used artificial here), and a set of plastic bugs .  Add scoopers and tweezers, and you’ll be surprised how much fun the children have digging around for their tiny specimen. 

Children build sensory, small motor, and language skills with this activity as they scoop, squeeze, scatter, and sift.  As you talk about the bugs, their names and characteristics, as well as places you and your children have found them outside, you also introduce some science concepts.

For more favorite fall activities, click here!

Check out How to Find Sensory Materials on the Cheap!

Find out how to make a Sensory Table on a Budget.