Fall Science with Leaves and Pine Cones

October 19, 2016 by Sarah White 1 Comment

Fall is a great time to gather natural materials to using in play, art and learning, and there are a great variety of things you can do with them, from painting on leaves to making collages of natural materials, drawing the parts of a leaf or a pine cone, and using those observations to learn more about the natural world.

Dayna from Lemon Lime Adventures has gathered some great ideas for exploring natural materials.

First, I love this experiment about why pinecones open. It’s honestly something I’d never thought about, but I think the observations her kids made and the experiment they came up with to learn more about how and why pinecones open and close were excellent. This is a great one to try if you have pine trees in your yard or where you walk in your neighborhood so you can gather a bunch to play with.

She also has a great list of sensory activities related to leaves including art projects, sensory jars, leaf playdough, a fall scavenger hunt and more.

Which reminded me of another leaf-related activity I saw recently involving leaves of different colors in water. I saw it a Kiwi Crate. Your kids will be surprised how easy it is to get the color out of leaves.

Do you have any activities involving leaves that you love to do? I’d love to hear about them!

Check out this article on the best STEM gifts for kids.

Check out our Online store for special buys on Educational gifts We find bulk items and end-of-stock supplies to bring you heavily discounted items. (make sure you check our store often so you don’t miss out on new stock). We also have some free printable files, including a Science PDF for learning about Microscopes.

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Leaf Reading and Writing Activities

Comments

Cathie Mulindwa says
October 27, 2016 at 2:55 am
Very creative got impressed and thank you

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Reflecting on the Past Year with Kids

I’m in deep denial about the fact that new year is almost upon us again! It’s been the fastest and the longest year at the same time, and I can look back and see some good things as well as some things I wish had gone differently.

Doing a year in review with your kids — whether in the classroom or at home — is a good way to capture some of their memories and the things they really liked about the year gone by.

There are a lot of different printable year in review worksheets you can use if you want to make this super easy. Here are links to a few (often part of larger posts about NYE celebrations with kids that are worth a read, too):

Teach Beside Me has lots of fun printables fro the end of the year, including a year in review that covers favorite memory, funniest memory and the best book they read, among other topics.
NurtureStore‘s version has space for a self-portrait and prompts like favorite toy, best day out this year and future dream job.
Remember favorites, their “best idea” of the year and have room for setting goals for next year with this one from The Keele Deal.
The year in review from Yes We Made This has room for drawing or writing and includes things like something they learned, a memory they made and a place they visited.

Of course you could pretty easily make your own year in review for the whole family to do that asks questions based on what you most want to remember. (Favorite video game? Best friend? Favorite family memory?)

And if after the year in review you’re ready to look ahead a bit, Mrs. Merry has new year’s resolution printables to inspired kids to look ahead and set goals for things they want to try. You can totally fill this one out as a grownup, too.

[Photo: Mrs. Merry]

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