Fall is my favorite season of the year, the cooler temperatures, the tasty flavors, and the vibrant changing colors. Fall leaves lend themselves to hands on learning in so many ways that can be differentiated to any child’s age and ability easily:
To delve a little deeper, a fall leaf scrapbook is a perfect activity to engage in during autumn. As usual, I love to tie a little technology into my activities, so Leaf Snap is a very useful app for this project. Leaf Snap is so simple to use, and it is free! It has beautiful pictures of leaves, flowers, seeds, and bark. The app also includes detailed information such as scientific names, habitat, etc. After downloading the app, set out to collect a variety of fall leaves. Bring them inside and place each leaf on a piece of white paper, open the app, and click the “snap it” button. The app will proceed to give results of which type of tree each leaf fell from. After selecting the tree, and looking at the pictures, next click on the small book icon in the upper right hand corner, to open up further information. You can record the information about each leaf on the printable chart and then you are ready to make your scrapbook.
This is where the project can get creative and be differentiated. Record and use as much information as appropriate for your child on the chart, and use a variety of paper, markers, and other accents to make your scrapbook personal and unique. Simply glue each leaf to its own piece of paper, and then write information about the leaf on that page. Finally, staple all your pages together to make a scrapbook. If you are looking to make your leaves last longer, try placing them in contact paper, or laminating them before you place them in the scrapbook. This is a fun way to get outside and learn on a beautiful fall day.
For extending your knowledge on autumn leaves, try these titles for a little book love:
One of my favorite fall activities is venturing with my daughter to the local farmer’s market to select natural autumn decorations for our porch. Each year, there is an abundance of beautiful produce perfect for our preparations. This year, I wondered if I could spin this plethora of products into a learning opportunity. The farm always seems to have such a wide variety of pumpkins, gourds, and squash, I decided to investigate what exactly makes them different. All of my searches kept coming back to “you carve pumpkins, you look at gourds, and you eat squash”. This did not seem terribly scientific, and as a lover of anything and everything pumpkin, I know I eat them too! Pumpkins, gourds, and squash all fall into the same scientific family (Cucurbitaceae). All of the glorious different plants you see at the farm come from the hundreds of different genus and species in this group. Finally, I was able to come up with an easier differentiation we could use to classify our haul of fall goodies, the stems! Pumpkin stems seem wooden, gourds have ridged stems, and squash stems are spongy. With so many colors, textures, shapes and sizes, pumpkins, gourds, and squash lend themselves easily to wonderful classification exercises, comparison and contrast activities, and descriptive words. Try some of these activities with your children after your next trip to the market!
Classify your fall objects as pumpkins, gourds, or squash
Make a Venn Diagram comparing pumpkins, gourds, and squash (see printable)
Make a chart to compare them. You could even take pictures of the items you purchase and glue them in the right spot! (see printable)
Sort the pumpkins, gourds, and squash by color, shape, or size
Brainstorm a list of words to describe them and try your hand at creative writing, maybe even a fall poem!
I love this time of year, because we are all looking for ways to express our gratitude. I can turn a challenging day around by spending a few minutes thinking of all that I have to be grateful for. Did you know that research supports the fact that gratitude makes us healthier and happier? With this is mind I set out to find a new way for us to share what we are thankful for together.
I thought it would be nice to leave little invitations around the house reminding us as a family to stop and express our thanks for the little and big things we do for each other on a daily basis.
It has turned out to be a wonderful experience as we continue to find little notes for each other when we least expect them.
You can spread the gratitude in your family too! Simply print out the cards below and leave them out to be discovered. You will have heartfelt thank yous popping up around your house in no time…
“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.” -Melody Beattie
With family gatherings to plan and Christmas lists looming, it’s easy to let the meaning of Thanksgiving get lost or watered down. Ideally we would live in a constant state of gratitude, but I like the subtle reminder that Thanksgiving brings us each year. An excuse to stop and take pause-be thankful for all things, both big and small. I especially think it’s wonderful to teach this to our children in a world obsessed with having more. Last year we took an afternoon and composed a gratitude list, it was both endearing and eye-opening to see the things my children thought of. This year we decided to expand on that idea and take a moment each day to add at least one thing to a month-long gratitude list in the form of a gratitude tree.
When a quiet moment arises each day, my girls and I sit by the fire, write down something we’re thankful for, and then attach it to our tree. I love the idea of something tangible and beautiful to represent these thoughts we are focusing on this month. We decided to make fuzzy pom-poms from yarn and hang them from our tree with the pieces of our growing list attached to each one.
All you need to make a tree of your own is a few gathered branches, a vessel to hold them, and some slips of paper. Adding an extra object like our pom-poms into the mix isn’t necessary, but adds to the fun! You could choose anything you want, from acorns to leaves. You could also choose to cut your paper into fun shapes instead, like stars or feathers.
To make things easy, we used full sheet label paper to make our strips. Simply fold each strip in half, write your thought, pull the backing off and attach to your pom-pom or other object. The most important thing is to make things fun and accessible for the little ones. My girls love seeing all of the pom-poms on display and enjoy taking turns picking out the one we will use. Our strips, scissors, and pen are stored in a jar right next to the tree.
Whatever you choose to do, I hope you are able to pause for a moment with the ones you love and reflect on all that you are grateful for this month. It’s not too late to create a special moment with your little ones!
Fall is my favorite season of the year, the cooler temperatures, the tasty flavors, and the vibrant changing colors. Fall leaves lend themselves to hands on learning in so many ways that can be differentiated to any child’s age and ability easily: 
