Fall / Leaves / Squirrels / Scarecrows

Hope you enjoy all the fun fall inspired activities I am posting

that we did in our classroom last week.   I will also be posting 

our ideas from our Pumpkin Week that we are doing this week, so make sure you check back for that!

Leaf sensory bin (we used fake leaves as ours were wet outside)

We added plastic acorns and leaves to find and sort or pattern with.

 Leaf shaped cookie cutters and Play-doh

 We used contact paper & tissue paper to make leaves

 Filling our letter of the week with fall manipulatives

 We mixed up salt/cinnamon play-dough made some leaf

ornaments.  We heated them in the oven for about 4 hours on 200

 These turned out so cute and if you made the leaves small

enough and thin enough, they would make cute necklaces.

 Counting, tallying & graphing

 Painted Hand/Leaf cards to make cards with.  The hands can

also be turned the other way to make a heart and it could say

"I Love Fall!"

 We measured many things in our room with leaves we found 

outside...including ourselves....

 Then we graphed them to find tallest/shortest

 Take a tray or board and lay a few fall time items on it.

Have children study to board for a minute or two.

Then have them turn around and hide their eyes.  While they

are turned...."steal / borrow" one of the items and place 

behind your back.  See if they can identify the missing object.

 We went on a scavenger hunt and found all the items on 

our paper.  We checked them all off and put them in a bag

with the picture so they could be shared with family or they could 

go on a scavenger hunt with their family and see if they could 

find them all too!

 We have too fire-bellied toads that we brought out to play 

with us in our fall stuff for a while.  This is Gilbert whom we have had for 11 years.

 This is Daisy whom we have had for 8 - 9 years now.

 We used paint dabbers to color all of our scarecrow's clothes....

 then we added their faces and some leaves from outside to 

complete our scarecrow pics.

 Using fall items to pattern

 I laminated these leaves years ago and we use them to 

sort by type and then by size.

 Please help our squirrels find the right tail!  It will soon

be winter and they may need those furry tails to stay warm!

 Played our "Oh Nuts!" Game

If you turn over am "oh nuts" card you lose a turn.

If you land on an acorn, you get to move ahead 2 spaces.

Be the first to make it to the tree to win the game!

 Use brown, black and white paint to paint a squirrel shape,

then glue leaves from outside to his tail and give him a nose and eyes.  Cut out around the outline.

Color the leaves by following the color code at the top. 

Great to see if they know their colors :)

Use tiles to finish a scarecrow picture to make sides match

Followed directions to see what color to trace each leaf or acorn 

with and then finished coloring according to color.

Followed directions.  Listened to hear how many leaves of 

each color to color and what color to trace the bag and rake tines.

That is a lot of what our FALL week was about!

Enjoy fall ---- My favorite time of year!!

Remember to check back for pumpkin ideas!!!

A Week of Color Exploration

Still have two more days of our week to go, but we have done

so many fun, awesome things, that I wanted to share them 

with you!  Enjoy and hope it gives you some ideas!

We started off our week with reading Pete the Cat's I Love My White Shoes book.

We also watched some Pete the Cat things on youtube.  Found this printable at Coloring page

We followed along together and sang his song with each color.

We played this game quite a bit the last few days!

I just searched Converse shoes to get a sheet of shoe pics.  Printed and cut apart on tag board.

I also printed a little pic of Pete to hide under a shoe while the kids hide their eyes.

Before they could flip a card, they had to say...

"Pete, are you under the orange   shoe?"

This helps them learn to put full sentences together 

instead of saying, "Pete, orange shoe?"

We made this cute craft I had seen on pinterest.

Super simple and it was good cutting practice as they cut out

the curved belly part, the head, tail and shoes.....while I cut out the eyes

they made, whiskers, and shoelaces.

We found it stood easier if you folded the shoes outward and glued

the legs together.

The next day we watched my 25 year old VHS movie of

Rainbow Fish while eating popcorn for our morning snack.

For our craft we used celery pieces to paint scales on our fish.

I found the fish printable at Rainbow fish printable

We each had some foil "scales" to share with a friend :)

We used blue Play-doh and pony beads, shiny buttons and other beads to 

decorate some beautiful rainbow fish.

One of our science experiments was:

WalkingWater

We filled two clear cups with water and added a few drops of blue

food coloring in one and some yellow in another.  We sat those two cups up 

on a plastic container.  Then we sat another container down in front of those.  We took 

two long, thin strips of paper towels and put one end in the colored water and the other end of each on into the empty cup.  We let this sit  and checked on it periodically and you can see how the 

water walked down the paper and combined to make a new color.  This was a big hit :)

Tomorrow we are going to use red & yellow and then the next day we are going to use

red and blue and then use ALL the colors we used and made to watercolor with the next day :)

We used primary colors to do marble roll paintings

I wrapped construction paper around different tubes and taped to a big wipe-off board and supplied 

them with a bowl of colored objects to use tongs or tweezers to grasp and drop into 

the matching tube.  Once all objects were dropped we counted to find most/least/equal.

Colored Bean Bag Toss Game

We just laid out sheets of construction paper to match the bean bags we have.

You could also use colored tape to tape off shapes to throw colors into.

Then we counted how many total bags we could get on the sheets.  This game

was also a hit and played a lot.

Parking Lot Color Match

I made a parking lot with a large sheet of paper and construction paper 

parking spaces.  the easiest thing to use to make the white lines is...Wite-out or the one on the 

little wheel (which is what I used).  Just pick what cars you want to use and have the 

matching colors to park on.

Plastic trays & Plastic cubes to sort

Totty Tiles - Shape/Color matching game

Fun with Eye Droppers and colored water

Colorful Magnets

Color puzzles

We read Brown Bear, Brown Bear and made these 
take home story cards in an emvelope.

 The printable I used, but there are many
online if you like a different one.

Mixing new colors with two paints 

and some shaving cream.  We saved these to 

paint with outside at the end of the week.

Our second "Walking Water" Experiment
What will Red & Yellow make???

They made ORANGE!!

Painting the fence with our
shaving cream paint from the bags.

Our last "Walking Water" experiment
What will Blue & Red make??

Shaving cream sprayed on top of water and
watercolors dripped on top.

These make beautiful fireworks
under the water as the colors drip through.

Feeding the right colored block to each
of our very hungry Lego Monsters.

Matching colors and shapes flannel board activity

Using our shaving cream/eye dropper experiment outside to
fingerpaint pics

and Letters on the picnic table

Using up all the shaving cream water to throw
on the fence to clean off the water.

Red & Blue make Purple!!!!!

That is most of our activities for the week!
 Hope this helps you have a 

COLORFUL CLASSROOM!