Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert

One of my favorite fall stories is Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert.  This imaginative story leads into so many fun activities for preschoolers!  The first day we read the story and spent some time exploring fresh and dried leaves.  We looked at the colors, shapes, and details of the leaves.  We listended to the dry leaves and imagined what pictures we could make with various leaves.
 It happened to be a beautiful fall day on Monday and the leaves covered the ground outside.  We took the children out and let them play in the leaves.  Before long they were working together to pile the leaves up so they could jump in them!  They had a ball playing in the leaves and finding other signs of fall!


1, 2, 3 Jump!  This little girl found a whole pocketfull of pine cones under a nearby tree!  She also noticed the sap coming out of the tree trunk and learned about it’s sticky qualities as she explored!  One of our art activities this week is “leaf blowing”.  I brought in a hair dryer and the kids helped me crumple up dried leaves.  We painted glue over a piece of paper and then dropped dried leaf pieces on top.  The best part was turning on the “wind” hair dryer and blowing the leaves all over the wet glue!  They loved being able to control the wind!