Leaves Are a FALLing

Fall here in the South Central U.S. is not like it was for me growing up on the East Coast. The weather is still warm and mild. But the leaves have been falling from the trees recently (October), and that prompted this cute inquiry from my two-year-old when he picked up a brown leaf -- "Oh, no," he said. "This leaf fell down!" He then looked up at the tree, and sadly said, "I don't know how to get it back up there." That began our first discussion about autumn.

BOOKS: We enjoyed Oliver Finds His Way by Phyllis Root about a bear cub chasing after a leaf into the woods. And we also have Leaves by David Ezra Stein that works well with the autumn season.
ACTIVITY: We've been picking up interesting leaves on our walks these days and collecting them in a bucket on the font porch. So we just reached into our leaf bucket and got out the tempera paint. We started by doing leaf stamp prints, by just painting the leaves and pressing them onto construction paper. But then my son had so much fun just painting the leaves that that became the longer activity.