We enjoyed a couple of books to celebrate the day.
When the Leaf Blew In by Steve Metzger is a great story with many animals. When I have a large group of multi-age children telling a story about animals keeps them involved longer.
I printed off pictures of all the animals in the story and before reading the book I handed them out to the children (not everyone got one but it still worked). As I read the story and introduced the next animal, the child with that animal would bring it up and put it on the board.
The pictures give a glue as to the next animal and as we waited for the little one to bring their animal picture up we would guess the next animal and make its sound.
At the art table I used the book “Leaf Jumper” by Carole Gerber as inspiration for making leaf prints.
The book has images of several different leaves. They are colourful and detailed. So I decided to make prints for some of the trees that grow around here.
There was maple, oak, birch and willow.
The children used paint rollers to cover the image with paint.
Then turning it over on to paper and pressing it flat.
Lifting the styrofoam image they found a print of their leaf on their paper.
Their art looked similar to the book, leaves floating around in the blue sky.
