Sink or float is a classic preschool activity. You gather an assortment of items and have the children guess which will sink or float, and then test their hypotheses. (It made me laugh not too long ago when David Letterman added a gag segment called “Will it Float” with a huge pool of water and random items for the members of the audience to make predictions about. I’m guessing he’d been to his little boy’s preschool the day he came up with that one!)
Pumpkin Scoop
While exploring pumpkins with young children, you can’t miss the opportunity to examine the insides of these fascinating gourds as well as the outsides! Cut open a pumpkin and place it in your sensory table with scoops, spoons, tweezers, and magnifiers. Provide cups as well, for collecting the seeds. You can air dry them and use them to grow pumpkins next year! (Read more about saving seeds here. Pumpkins are really quite easy to grow if you have the space. Saving and reusing seeds also ties in very nicely with the book, Pumpkin Pumpkin by Jeanne Titherington.)
Old-School Leaf Rubbing
I once heard someone say that we have to be careful not to be in such a rush to give our children all the things we never had, that we forget to give them the things we did have. That saying comes to mind as I think about this old-school leaf rubbing activity. I don’t think I even need to give directions, do I? I hope you all had plenty of opportunities to make leaf rubbings as children! I just wanted to remind you to pass on that opportunity! Even today, in the age of the internet and wii, children light up as the leaf seems to magically appear on the page while they feverishly rub their crayons across the paper! This activity increases fine motor skills while also creating awareness of the texture and other characteristics of leaves (science). Combine this with other leaf activities that can be found at the fall favorites page! Enjoy childhood!
Leaf Pounding
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.)
Autumn Leaves Song
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:
Happy Children
Once you’ve done your Four Seasons chart, you can extend the discussion (perhaps the next day) by singing the “Happy Children” song. What makes this song so great, is that it’s written, in part, by the children!
Start out with your Four Seasons chart, as well as five pieces of paper. On one paper write the title, “Happy Children” and perhaps add some quick drawings of smiling children. On the next paper write, “Happy children in the spring time…” Repeat this line on the other papers, substituting for the four seasons (“summer”, “fall time” or “autumn”, “winter”).
These are the Four Seasons!
Here’s how I like to teach the four seasons to preschoolers. Using chart paper, draw a circle, divide it into fourths, and label it with the title and the seasons as you see in the picture above. Then, using the cards on this PDF download-
Recipe for Fun: Leaves, Sawdust, and Bugs!
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.
See How We’ve Grown!
Young children love to talk about, and hear about, when they were “little”. Here’s a series of activities I like to do with young ones to talk about how they’ve grown.
See How We've Grown!
Young children love to talk about, and hear about, when they were “little”. Here’s a series of activities I like to do with young ones to talk about how they’ve grown.
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