Autumn is here!! It’s my favourite time of the year! The weather gets colder and more fresh. You feel guilt-free staying at home with a book enjoying a hot cup of chocolate. Nature starts its transformation. In Finland Autumn is in full swing, the colours are absolutely stunning, we call it ‘Ruska’.
A walk in fresh air is always a great thing to do, but especially in Autumn the things you can find whilst out are extra exciting. Take your child or your class or just yourself out on a walk and collect interesting things you can find.
Here’s a few things I find useful to collect. See further details for activities below.
- Leaves – great for colour recognition, crafts, and rubbings
- Pine cones – great for painting with and making animals with
- Sticks – great for crafts and building
- Flowers – if you can still find some, dry and use for crafts
All of the above can also be used for colour recognition and sorting, counting, building 2D and 3D creations and shape making and recognition. Imagination is the limit, you can really use the natural materials for a whole lot of things!
Drying the leaves
It’s good to make sure that your leaves are dry before you start using them in crafts of activities. The easiest way to do so is to place your leaves in between a newspaper, place something heavy on top (like a book) and leave them overnight. Make sure you place your leaves on the newspaper in such a manner that they do not touch each other. I prefer to use newspaper as the paper quality is much more porous and therefore sucks up the moisture from the leaves well.
Some leaves are better to keep than others. Thicker and waxy leaves are good to keep for a longer period of time. You also want to collect leaves that have recently fallen, because as they start to decompose, they become increasingly brittle.
Colour naming and sorting
Look at the world around you and admire the colours you can see. Encourage your child to name the different colours and even see if you can ask them to get a leaf of a particular colour you suggest. If your child is older and knows their colours well, why not name them in a different language you or they might be learning.
To make the sorting easier, you can use coloured pieces of paper or as pictured papers with the colour names. Three levels of difficulty:
- Coloured papers – for early years coloured papers are good
- Names of colours written in their respective colours – those children or students learning the beginning sounds or reading; the names of the colours make it more interesting but the colours are there to make it easier
- Names of colours written in black – more challenging reading activity for those more advanced in their reading skills
Make images with natural materials
Nature has made so many interesting shapes and forms that are just fantastic for picture making. You can make 2D images or build 3D images – just your imagination is the limit!
You can just keep your materials in baskets and create images with them. Or if you’d like to keep the images, just take a piece of paper and glue the pieces on. I recommend liquid glue and a brush or small spatula (or a piece of cardboard) to spread the glue with as the materials can be a bit delicate.
Here are a few examples of what I came up with. Why not build a story around the images too. “There once was a girl with flaming red hair…”
Counting activities
I love counting things and regularly did it with my class. I often ask them to “Go and collect 10 leaves” or “Can you find three yellow leaves?” or “How many leaves can you keep on your head?”. Then we count them together or just count to three and toss them up in the air to enjoy the Autumn rain!
You can use number cards and/or amount cards to count and sort your natural materials. This is great for counting, number recognition, naming and just good ol’ fun 🙂
Autumn Colours Painting Project
Big piece of paper on the table, poster paints in Autumn colours and a bunch of different kinds of tools to splash and splosh the paint with!
Aprons highly recommended! 😉
Sit back, relax and enjoy the joy on the kids faces as they explore the tools and make their marks. It’s sensory, colour recognition, team work and just a whole lot of fun!
Once the painting is dry, cut it up to smaller pieces and have the kids cut some leaves out of it. We’ve made wreaths and trees out of them.
Make Pine Cone Animals
All children in Finland know the “Käpylehmä” or the “Pine Cone Cow”. All you need is a pine cone and sticks. They are everywhere this time of the year. Just head out on a lovely fresh Autumn walk and collect different sized pine cones and sticks.
Cut the sticks to a suitable size and attach to the pine cone – there you go, your first farm animal 😉
You can also paint the pine cones and/or add glitter for a Disco-cow 😉
Top tip:
If your pine cones are closed, just keep them in a warm, dry place for overnight and they will open up again nicely.
Science of the Leaves
Why do the leaves change colour in the Autumn? What happens?
Here’s a fun little activity to do to look into the science and understanding of what happens in those beautiful Autumn leaves:
You need:
- White paper
- Plastic pocket / file folder of the same size as the paper (I used A4)
- Permanent markers
- White board markers
- Something to wipe with; paper / microfiber cloth / sponge
Prepare:
A white paper (I used A4 size) where you draw leaves that you colour in yellow, orange and red colours (I recommend using red the least as that will be seen through more easily, see below). Then take a plastic pocket where you put the paper with the leaves drawn on it. Draw the outline of the leaves on the paper with black permanent marker on the plastic. Then colour the leaves with green white board marker (the darker the better). Note that the permanent marker will become loose with the ink from the whiteboard marker, so be careful when colouring with green 😉
With your child or child group:
Go for a walk and collect some leaves and admire the different colours on them. Perhaps you can see some that have many colours, or maybe the veins of the leaves are a different colour? Explain to the children that the green of the leaves is called chlorophyll, and it is food for the leaves. As long as the leaves are green, the leaves are getting plenty of chlorophyll = food! When the colours on the leaves start changing, you know that the tree can no longer produce food for the leaves and therefore the leaves change colour and fall. The tree is preparing for a good winter nap!
When you’re back from your walk, give the children the pre-prepared paper+plastic with leaves and something to wipe with. Ask the children to “eat” the green with the cloth. Nom nom nom! Finally you can see the colours remaining when you have wiped away / eaten the green. The yellows, oranges and reds were there all along! 😉
Have fun!
Askarteluideoita lapsille päiväkodissa, lapsiryhmissä ja kotona 