Every leaf that falls in your environment has the potential for great learning!

We have leaves falling down around our house by the bucketful right now so I am making sure my students get outside to explore them while we can. We started off circle time today by exploring the progression of leaves as they change colors. For the purpose of discussion, I brought in some real leaves from my yard and set them out in order of how they change colors – from green to orange to red to brown…

Then each child was given a clipboard with a checklist of leaves they were to go outside and find.

The checklist is my way of getting the children to slow down and look at the details in their world.

After the children found each leaf on their checklist, they brought them back over to me and set them on a piece of paper. Then they were off to find the next leaf on their checklist…

After the children finished gathering all their leaves and marking them off of their checklists, we then glued the checklist and the leaves to our paper. Not every child found every leaf on their check lists but every child LOVED the experience of looking for their leaves and having their own checklist on a clipboard.  They were all so intentional in their hunt for leaves…

Here is a little better look at the checklist I made  (To download the pdf – click here!) …

And here is a look at our fall leaf collages…

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