The kindergarten class enjoyed reading the Leaf Man book by Lois Ehlert and discovering all the different leaf characters in the book.
After reading this book, the children followed up the book by creating their own leaf characters.
The teacher had some paper leaves that were bright and colorful for the children to choose from for their creations. I am not sure where she got the leaves from but the activity might also work well by collecting real leaves if you have them in your area.
This activity reminded me of a friend on Facebook who has started a leaf exchange. I hadn’t really thought about how there are other areas where they do not experience a season of Fall like we do here in Indiana.
For the leaf exchange, the participants actually gather a set of leaves from their hometown, preserve them in some way, label and catagorize them, and then send them by snail mail to another person in the group.
There is so much potential with an activity like this. A class can read the Leaf Man book, create their own leaf man characters, and then bring leaves from home to share, classify, and compare.
After the children created their leaf characters, we went back to the book to do a little comparison of their leaves with some that were in the book.
One little boy enjoyed the book so much that he asked me to sit with him and read it again. He was so inspired by the pictures that he inspired me!
If you don’t have this book in your class, then let me recommend it to you!
Check out this simple activity for classifying leaves by Two Little Seeds!
Learn how to preserve leaves with this article by Gingerbread Snowflakes!
