Autumn!

Autumn is here!  

You can not begin the new season with anything less than autumn activities, right?  For Gabriel and Ollie we are focusing on The Farm unit.  A field trip to a popular working farm in Salinas, CA is on the schedule this month including pumpkin patch picking, hay rides and a tour of a real farm.  The kids are also exploring with leaves and learning about leaves.  The little's read a book called Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert.

This is such a fun book!  The story is about leaves blowing around...and everywhere that they land, some form of an animal or man or sea creature is formed.  It inspires kids to collect colorful leaves in the fall and create their own version of leaf man!

For Zachary the lesson only gets more challenging.  Zachary called his Grandpa who lives in Missouri and asked for samples of leaves to be sent from Grandpas home state.  You could extend this lesson into asking your child to get as many leaves from various states across the country!  We however only asked 1 person.  He also collected leaves from California.  His project was to observe the leaves and determine arrangement, whether they are simple or compound leaves, what kind of margin they have and look at their vennatation.  He used the leaves and observations to create a notebook of the various leaves. 

Step 1: Collect and organize your leaves.  Grandpa did a great job of labeling the bags for Zach which was a huge help!

Step 2:  Observe and record your analysis of the leaves.  

Step 3:  For the observation sheet you will need to prepare the leaves.  Pressing the leaves help keep them preserved.  First, tear out a notebook paper size sheet of wax paper out.  

 Step 4:  Hold the leaves flat, cover them with another piece of wax paper. 

Step 5:  Place a towel on top and with a hot iron, slowly iron over the cloth.  The heat from the iron causes the wax from the paper to adhere to the leaves.  this protects the leaves from wrinkling up and falling apart.

Step 6:  Slowly pull apart the sheets of wax paper and remove the leaves.  Place the leaves in your observation book and add your notes about the leaves!