Autumn is a rich time of year to experience the outdoors and grow a child’s brain for listening and language. One of my favorite fall activities is creating 🍁 Leaf Rubbings that get kids listening and engaged!
I ask parents to take their child on a 🍂 leaf hunt to collect leaves for this activity. I encourage the family to talk about what they see, hear, and experience while walking, raking, or playing in the leaves. They arrive at our session with a bag of leaves ready to listen, create, talk, and learn.
Of course, you can collect leaves and have them ready for this listening and language-rich activity.
You should give leaf rubbing a try!
You will need:
Fresh leaves of different shapes and sizes. Crayons, preferably chunky ones with the paper stripped off and thin white copier paper.
Directions
1. Place a leaf 🍁 vein side up on a smooth table and cover it with a sheet of paper.
2. Use the side of the crayon. Lay the crayon down on the paper and rub the crayon back and forth until the leaf’s outline and features are visible.
3. Put another leaf under the paper and use a different colored crayon to make a rubbing. It's fine if the leaf rubbings overlap a bit; it makes the rubbing even more beautiful.
4. Notice and describe features of the rubbings (e.g., My leaf has three points. The yellow leaf has a jagged edge).
YOU CAN TARGET:
🍁 Think of vocabulary and concepts to talk about while gathering and creating leaf rubbings. Plan ahead.
🍁 Use vocabulary naturally through experiences and in connected speech or conversationally. Vocabulary should not be taught as a list of words to be checked off.
🌳 Grow Language Concepts 🌳
- Spatial concepts (on, off, next to, above, below, etc)
- Temporal concepts (first, last, beginning, end, etc)
- Quantity concepts (some, all, more, less, empty, full, etc)
- Quality concepts (color, size, shape)
- Sorting skills, patterns, and counting
🍃 Get Moving with Verbs 🍃
You can use and highlight these verbs and many others when talking with the child.
- Blow (The leaves are blowing down the street.)
- Change (The leaves are changing colors.)
- Climb (Watch the squirrels climb through the branches.)
- Drop (The leaves dropped off the maple tree.)
- Jump (I love to run and jump in the leaves.)
- Rake (Grandpa and I are going to rake leaves today.)
- Throw (Grab some leaves and throw them up in the air.)
- March, stomp, skip, run, or roll through the leaves.
🍂 Expand Vocabulary with Adjectives 🍂
- Dry, crunchy, rustling, noisy
- Color words - green, red, brown … golden, crimson
- Rough, smooth, pretty, rounded, pointed, jagged edges
🐿️ Increase Vocabulary with Nouns 🐿️
- Acorn
- Bag
- Branches and sticks
- Leaves
- Pile
- Rake
- Tree
- Squirrel
What’s Next?
• Make an entry in the child’s Experience Book.
• Ask your child to give one of their leaf rubbings to a friend or neighbor.
• Read, Sing, and, Talk about Fall Leaves!
