Autumn Leaves are Falling
By Katie Kubesh © 2006 In the Hands of a Child
Autumn leaves are falling and what are you going to do about it? Don’t let the piles of leaves to be raked get you down, take the opportunity to play in the leaves and have some fun! Fall is a great time of year and there are so many subjects to study ranging from why the leaves change colors and fall off the trees to what chipmunks do to prepare for winter. A great place to visit this time of year is an orchard or farm market. You can pick up some pumpkins or acorn squash while you are there and learn to make a nutritious meal while you are at it!
Better yet, when you pay a visit to the farmer’s market pick up some pickling cucumbers and can some pickles! Not only a delicious treat, but also a fun hands-on activity that incorporates harvest, winter preparation, and healthy eating! Don’t forget the pumpkins! Pumpkins come in all sizes, they are healthy to eat, and there are many different ways to prepare them! The Five Little Pumpkins Project Pack from In the Hands of a Child incorporates a poem, pumpkins, shapes, colors, and counting activities all in 5 days worth of hands-on activities.
Let’s start with the leaves. If you haven’t already purchased the Harvest Festival Project Pack from In the Hands of a Child, this one is selling like leaves falling from the trees in October! This is a PreK unit but there are lots of ways you can adapt this to fit the needs of your older students as well (For a list of helpful ideas, visit
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HandsofaChildTalk, go to the files section and look for September 28 Chat. You’ll find a plethora of ideas to bring this unit up to higher levels).
Learn about the different types of leaves there are, why they change color in the fall, why trees lose their leaves in the fall. Many people think that deciduous trees lose their leaves in the fall so they won’t freeze in the winter. While this is one reason, the main reason they lose their leaves is due to the frozen ground. When the ground is frozen, the tree is unable to absorb water through its roots. Losing its leaves is one way the tree can cope with the lack of water during winter months. (The Forest Habitats Project Pack is a great way to learn about conifers and deciduous trees.) Discover why deciduous trees lose their leaves, but conifers don’t. Do some leaf rubbings of deciduous and conifers and compare the two.
And what do chipmunks do in the winter? We all hear about bears hibernating, but chipmunks are hibernators too! Chipmunks only wake up to eat. These small creatures have a lot to do to prepare for winter, they have to make their underground burrows, their bed of leaves, gather nuts and acorns, and carry them all home. What a great time of year to learn about hibernation, migration, and what we all do to prepare for winter (it’s also a great time to incorporate chores like raking, bringing in summer toys, preparing the garden). A great fall story you might not think of is
Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey. This is a great story to introduce hibernation and preparing for the winter months.
Here are some additional Project Packs and links for fall projects:
www.handsofachild.com:
Five Little Pumpkins HOCPP 1110
Harvest Festival HOCPP 1108
Little Miss Muffet HOCPP 1112
Bats HOCPP 1018
Spiders HOCPP 1017
Forest Habitats HOCPP 1099
Thanksgiving HOCPP 1016
Blueberry Sal HOCPP 1063
http://sidedish.allrecipes.com/az/DillPickls.asp
http://www.cdkitchen.com/recipes/cat/79/0.shtml
http://www.thatsmyhome.com/general/pickles.htm
http://gonewengland.about.com/cs/fallfoliage/a/aafallfamilyfun.htm
http://kidsdomain.com/craft/_fall.html
In the Hands of a Child provides lapbook-style Project Packs for all ages and abilities. Project Packs are wonderful hands-on learning tools that give children an ownership of knowledge. When children own their knowledge it is theirs forever!
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