Autumn is here and to celebrate we have been reading a wonderful book called The Leaf Man. In the story, the Leaf Man goes on a journey and see’s animals made of leaves, he drifts through the sea and see’s more creatures made of leaves. He continues his journey through a vegetable patch where all the vegetables are made of leaves but the big question is where will the Leaf Man’s journey end.
The Leaf Man has inspired our pre-school children to explore the endless possibilities of leaves. We have searched for the Leaf Man on our daily walk whilst we collected some leaves, acorns and pine cones. We then matched our autumnal finds to the illustrations in the book and discussed how the size, shape and colour of the leaves varied.
We created opportunities for the children to re-enact the story by racing the leaves down pipes and swirled them around in our builders tray just like the Leaf Man in the stream. We have then used straws to blow the leaves around just like the Leaf Man being blown by the wind. The pre-school children came up with lots of ideas of what else we could do with the leaves including making them into paint brushes using sticks and string and making them into fans which helped develop hand-eye coordination.
