Hands On Learning With Leaves

In the fall we love learning about leaves and doing activities with them. We are always doing some activities with them. This year we did a full 2 weeks on the study of leaves. As part of that we did these hands on activities and sensory bin.

When we have a sensory bin I always try to do some hands on activities with the items before they go in the sensory bin. Other times we do the sensory bin and pull the items out to do our hands on activities. This is one time we did the activities before the bin. We also read some fun books about leaves: Look What I Did with a Leaf! (Naturecraft), Leaf Man and We’re Going on a Leaf Hunt.

What you need: rice, cups, white paper, sort bin (got ours at Target a while back), leave table toppers (got ours at Michael’s).

The first activity we did was sorting. We talked about the colors in the bins and what the items where. We talked about the different types of leaves she was sorting. We also talked about how not all the owls would not fit in the the small bin.

She decided to make all the sorting even as she did it. I took it as a chance to teach her some skip counting. We did 2 and 3 skip counting.

I gave her a pattern to start with and she completed it and made two patterns of her own. This is great for learning pattern for math in the future. After they have finished removed some of the pieces and have them tell you what pieces are missing. It is also a great idea to have them repeat their patterns back.

Once we were done it was time for great sensory bin fun. She loved getting to explore the leaves in the rice. My older girls also like the sensory bin and they do it for quite time. I leave the sensory bins around for at least 2 weeks for them to play with.