Posted in Autumn

Next week we will be doing a fun, fall unit! This wasn't originally in my unit plans for the year...but I simply couldn't go through my favorite season without having some fun crafts and reading some great books about AUTUMN. So...here are the ideas we are going to be using next week! (If you notice, we are mostly focusing on fall leaves this year -- the past few years we have done big units on apples and pumpkins...so this year I decided to go with leaves. I'm sure we will re-visit the favorite units of apples and pumpkins in later years.)

Great Books We'll Be Reading...

The Pumpkin Patch Parable by Liz Curtis Higgs

The Biggest Leaf Pile by Steve Metzger

From Seed to Pumpkin by Wendy Pfeffer

Why Do Leaves Change Colors? by Betsy Maestro

The Little Scarecrow Boy by Margaret Wise Brown

 Autumn Leaves by Ken Robbins

Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf by Lois Ehlert

The Listening Walk by Paul Showers

Poppleton in Fall by Cynthia Rylant

Every Autumn Comes the Bear by Jim Arnosky

Cranberry Autumn by Wendy and Harry Devlin

The Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert

Neat Craft Ideas or Coloring Pages...

*I think we will make a leaf collection book using THESE printable pages for each type of leaf! I love this idea!

*I think we will paint THIS fingerprint tree with paint - only using fall colors - yellow, orange and red for the leaves.

*We will do some leaf rubbings - I have never done that with the kids yet, I think the girls will love that project!

*I also want to make a leaf stain glass picture to hang on one of our doors. We will collect a few pretty leaves each, then place the leaves and a few pieces of  crayon shavings in fall colors on wax paper. Place another sheet wax paper on the top of the design and then I will iron them together - pretty!

*Make leaf creatures - glue a leaf down on a piece of construction paper. Add legs and head, face to make an animal or wings to make a butterfly, etc. We did this last year and Hannah did such a great job! I'd like to try again this year!

Other activities...

*I will print one of these fall poems to read and color. We may also use 1 line from the poem as copywork. I especially like the poem on this page entitled Leaves.

*I will print the easier version of the Autumn word search for Hannah, she loves these!

*I'm going to use THIS leaf pattern to write adjectives describing fall on.

*Go on several nature walks, hopefully in different places -- our own neighborhood, the state park closest to our home, etc. We will collect leaves and any other nature tidbits we find along the way.

*If we find enough of a variety of leaves we will sort and graph the different colors.

*I hope to help the girls identify what types of leaves we find - lots of times I don't eve know! I need to learn! Hopefully we will draw a few leaves in our nature journals as well.

Fall Tea Time ideas...

*For our weekly tea time this week here are a few ideas I have jotted down, not sure which ones we will get to or end up doing! Caramel apple cider, mini pumpkin pies, pumpkin bread -- yummmmm!

*We will probably read a few of the autumn poems I listed above.

*Make some type of fall decoration/center piece for our table with LEAVES!

Happy Autumn to you and yours!

(here's an old favorite fall picture of my 3 little ones from fall 2005)