Leaves are everywhere in autumn and all children, whether in urban or rural settings, can catch them, collect them, feel them, smell them, kick them about and generally enjoy them. This makes the theme of leaves an ideal one that provides children with a wide range of experiences as they explore and investigate the natural world. Support and guidance from adults can help children make the most of these experiences and enhance their learning.
Awake children's interest in leaves by suspending an autumn leaf mobile near an interactive display of different leaves. Laminate some of the leaves so that they retain their colour for a while. Encourage families to contribute to the leaf collection, and use a range of textures for the signs and notices so that adults can draw children's attention to them. Use the notices to involve the whole community - for example, 'These are leaves from the tree that grows outside Hamish's house'. Make sure that the displays are at child height and that the children are involved in putting them together and adding to them on a daily basis.
Small quantities of leaves can be explored indoors, but the topic is an excellent opportunity to get outside and discover them together, whatever the weather. Make sure that there are huge piles of leaves to run through, throw in the air and push into bags.
Graphics area
In this area, provide:
- paper shaped like leaves to make a book about leaves (or about anything else)
- scissors that cut wavy edge borders so that children can make their own leaf paper for writing and drawing
- a collection of leaf words, that children can suggest describing their shape, colour, texture or sound
- factual books about trees and leaves so children can make a zig-zag reference book of leaves that they found and where they found them
- leaf rubbings. Choose a leaf and put it underneath a sheet of paper so the back of the leaf, where the veins stand out, is facing up. Lie a crayon on its side and rub it over the leaf.
LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES
Beginning to form recognisable letters
Distinguishing between different marks they make
Using everyday words to describe position
Using the language of shape and size
Using simple tools and techniques
Using tools and materials for a particular purpose
Adult role
- Demonstrate how to press leaves to preserve them. (Avoid fat or juicy ones such as geranium or succulents.) Lay the leaves flat in a big book (phone books work well) for a couple of days.
- Support the children in making a tree of leaf words, each one written on a different paper leaf.
- Help the children use reference books to identify the leaves they have found.
Creative workshop
Resource the area with:
- a collection of dried and green leaves, changed daily
- lengths of card that children can glue leaves on and use to make picture frames
- a frame for a favourite picture using leaves. How many leaves do you use, and what shapes and colours are they?
- card of different sizes and shapes and various flat leaves for making greeting cards
- long lengths of fabric, such as sheeting and rollers for printing curtains
- pieces of sticky-backed plastic on which to build up a collage of leaves
- a range of paint colours so that the children can colour-match the leaf colours by mixing colours together.
LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES
Experimenting with colour, texture and shape
Using ideas involving fitting and overlapping
Creating collages
Combining different media to create new effects
Using the language of shape and size
Counting up to 10 objects and beyond
Using developing maths ideas to solve practical problems
Using everyday words to describe position
Looking closely at similarities and differences
Working as part of a group
Adult role
- The adult can best engage with the children by hinting at the possibilities of the materials provided and by responding to what the children do and say as they explore them. There will be occasions when the adult will want to model how to use some of the tools. For example, demonstrate leaf printing: cover a leaf with paint (not too thickly), then press it down on to a sheet of paper. You can smooth the leaf with your hand or, even better, lay another sheet on top and smooth that down. Now lift up the top sheet of paper and the leaf and see the print.
- Turn your leaf into a picture of a person/fairy/monster. Stick down a dried or fabric leaf for the body and use twigs or coloured pens or pencils to draw the head, arms and legs.
- Discuss the shapes and sizes of leaves that children are working with and how many they are using.
- Encourage the children to work as a group to produce backdrop curtains for displays by printing on long pieces of fabric.
Cooking area
Use cooking sessions to focus on the different leaf shapes and colours, and on their smell as well as their nutritional value.
- Cut out leaves from rolled biscuit dough. What different shapes can you make? When do they look more like real leaves - before or after cooking? Try icing some veins on them. Count the biscuits you have made. Are there enough for everyone?
- Grow some mustard and cress and look at the tiny leaves through a magnifying glass. Then eat them in a sandwich.
- Buy some leaves to taste (spinach, lettuce, Chinese cabbage, mint, coriander and so on). Do you recognise any of those tastes? Discuss what the leaves taste like and which one is your favourite.
- Make teas from various different leafy herbs (parsley, mint, sage, lemon verbena, coriander, etc) and hold a tea tasting.
LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES
Showing awareness of healthy eating
Describing and talking about what they see
Constructing with a purpose in mind, using a variety of resources
Commenting about the natural world
Using language such as 'more' and 'less'
Using language to share the things they create
Describing what they are trying to do
Outdoors
- Use every chance to sweep, rake and collect leaves from the outdoor area using brooms, rakes and dustpans. Discuss with the children which tools work best for the job.
- Set up a role-play area as a tree house. Make a cave shape using a table and upturned chairs, and drape them with netting or a tarpaulin covered with leaves.
- Provide materials so that the children can make a miniature garden from leaves, twigs and so on, in a tray of soil or sand.
- Use a paper or battery operated fan to make a leaf dance.
LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES
Responding to sights and smells in the natural world
Handling tools with increasing control
Showing awareness of space, themselves and others
Using language to imagine and recreate roles and experiences
Adult role
- Support the children as they make links with other areas of provision - for instance, using small-world characters to populate the 'tree house'.
- Encourage the children to tell stories about the family who live in the 'tree house'.
- Work with a group of children holding a parachute containing some leaves, and watch the leaves float up and down as they flap it.
- Observe leaves falling from a tree, or throw leaves in the air and encourage the children to try to catch them as they fall. Use a magnifying glass to examine ones you have caught.
- Ask questions such as 'How are the leaves different from each other?' and 'Do you think all the leaves came from the same tree?'
- Draw attention to similarities and differences in the leaves.
- Take photographs of different types of trees in the area and discuss the type of leaves that grow on that tree and where children can see the tree.
Sand and water areas
- Substitute crushed leaves for sand or add to the sand to change the texture.
- Introduce sieves and colanders to sieve out the leaves.
- Float leaves in the water trays and provide small-world characters such as sailors.
- Find out whether leaves float. Do all leaves float?
- Use a leaf as a boat. What can it be used to carry?
LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES
Using language for a range of purposes
Responding to their significant experiences
Investigating different objects and materials
Maths area
- Resource this area with baskets of leaves so that the children can sort them by shape/colour/size/smell/number of parts.
- Provide magnifying equipment to explore and observe the leaves closely.
- Include some small boxes for the children to fill.
- Provide balances and weighing machines for children who want to weigh leaves, and small paper bags and scoops for those who are interested in investigating the idea of capacity.
LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES
Counting actions and objects
Using language such as more and less to compare two numbers
Sorting familiar objects to identify their similarities and differences
Interacting with others and taking turns in conversation
Adult role
- Support the children in estimating how many leaves have been collected, and then count them together.
- Encourage everyone to choose one leaf from the collection, and then talk about what it's like. Use the descriptions to make some categories for a simple graph (such as 'smooth', 'pointy', 'lots of bits', or 'big', 'medium' and 'small'). Then stick the leaves on to the graph in the correct place.
- Suggest that the children fill one of the small containers with leaves. Ask them questions such as, 'How many leaves do you think you can you fit in your box?' and 'I wonder why you chose the very small leaves?'
LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES
Working as part of a group, taking turns
Using maths language to compare quantities
Looking closely at similarities, differences, patterns and change
Responding to songs and music
Working together as part of a group
Songs to sing
Sing and create actions for the following songs, sung to 'London Bridge is falling down':
Autumn leaves are falling down, falling down, falling down.
Autumn leaves are falling down; it is autumn.
Rake the leaves into a pile, into a pile, into a pile.
Rake the leaves into a pile; it is autumn.
Jump in the leaves and kick them up, kick them up, kick them up.
Jump in the leaves and kick them up; it is autumn.
Or, sing to 'The Wheels on the Bus':
The leaves on the trees are turning brown, turning brown, turning brown.
The leaves on the trees are turning brown, all day long.
The leaves on the trees come falling down, etc
The leaves on the ground blow all about, etc
Carole Skinner, Fran Mosley and Sheila Ebbutt work for maths specialist company BEAM, www.beam.co.uk
RESOURCE BOX
To explore the theme of leaves, have at the ready:
- real leaves, both fresh and dried, large and small, in a variety of shapes and textures
- house plants with leaves still attached
- skeleton leaves from the previous winter
- fabric 'leaves' (try www.libertycrafts.co.uk)
- fabric and papers in a range of textures and autumn colours
- cooking dough and playdough or clay
- magnifying glasses
- kaleidoscope
EXPLORING CHILDREN'S INTERESTS
Tuning in
Making time to talk to parents and carers is an important way of finding out about children's current interests and about what matters to them. Such information helps practitioners to provide a curriculum that is both relevant and meaningful.
Having an existing interest in a particular theme means that children approach it with enthusiasm and expertise, giving them confidence and increased motivation to engage in the activities provided. Children can use this expertise best in carefully planned, open-ended learning opportunities without prescribed, uniform outcomes.
Enhancing provision
Any significant interest that a child or children may have should be explored by enhancing a setting's continuous provision - that is, by adding theme-based resources to the areas of provision that are available daily to children. These should comprise:
- role play
- small-world play
- construction play
- sand and water
- malleable materials
- creative workshop area
- graphics area
- book area.
By taking this approach, children can choose to engage with the theme, or pursue their own interests and learning independently. Adults need to recognise that children require a suitable length of time to explore any interests in depth and to develop their own ideas.
Adult role
If children's interests are to be used to create the best possible learning opportunities, the adult role is crucial.
Adults need to be able to:
- enhance continuous provision to reflect the interests of children
- use enhancements to plan meaningful learning opportunities across all areas of the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS)
- know when to intervene in children's play - and when to stand back
- recognise that children need a suitable length of time to explore areas of provision to develop their own ideas
- model skills, language and behaviours
- recognise how observation, assessment and reflection on children's play can enhance adults' understanding of what young children know, and realise how these should inform their future planning.
AREAS OF LEARNING
Personal, social and emotional development
Communication, language and literacy
Problem-solving, reasoning and numeracy
Knowledge and understanding of the world
Physical development
Creative development
Book box
There are remarkably few current and good books about autumn, and those that exist are often by American publishers. You will be able to track down some older titles on Amazon and other such book websites.
If you are in search of photographs only, then you will be spoilt for choice at the website: www.istockphoto.com/index.php.
One book well worth buying is Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert (Harcourt Children's Books). A man made of leaves blows away, travelling wherever the wind may take him, in a fresh, autumn tale accompanied by illustrations made from actual leaves and die-cut pages on every spread that reveal gorgeous landscapes.
Another great title by Lois Ehlert is Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf (Harcourt Children's Books), in which a child describes the growth of a maple tree from seed to sapling.
Children will also enjoy Ferdie and the Falling Leaves by Julia Rawlinson and Tiphanie Beeke (Gullane Children's Books). Ferdie is very worried. His beautiful tree is losing its leaves. Ferdie tries everything he can to save them, but it's just no use. When the final leaf has 'plopped' off, Ferdie feels all hope has gone ... until he goes back the next day and a glorious sight awaits him!
Non-fiction titles that will interest older children within the EYFS and provide background information for providers include:
Autumn Leaves by Ken Robbins (Scholastic) An exploration of different kinds of leaves, and why trees lose their leaves in the autumn. Bright, crisp photos fill this book of natural science.
Why Do Leaves Change Color? by Betsy Maestro and Loretta Krupinski (Let's Read-And-Find-Out Science, HarperTrophy) An explanation of photosynthesis, pigments, and chlorophyll, all of which contribute to the phenomena of leaves changing colour.
When Autumn Comes by Robert Maass (Henry Holt & Company) Photographs and a brief text combine to portray typical events of a New England autumn in the country.
Trees and Leaves with Stickers by Ben Hoare (DK Ultimate Sticker Books) Fun facts and beautiful pictures.
