Autumn fun

Today is the first official day of autumn, so the Podlings and I had an autumn themed day today. We started off with some gluing, which always goes down well with the Podlings. I drew some freehand leaves on green paper (see below) and gave the Podlings some red, yellow and orange paper to tear (though I ended up tearing it up myself) and some red and yellow glitter. I talked to the Podlings about how the leaves on the trees are green, but in the autumn they change to red, yellow, brown and orange. I then told them we were going to change their green leaves to autumn colours and let them loose with the glue. They had a wonderful time doing this and Lily enjoyed it so much I had to give her a second leaf. I later cut the finished leaves out and glued them on different colour background paper.

Let the sticking commence! I wrote 'leaf' on each picture because I find that Tom only needs to be shown a word once (sometimes a couple of times) and he knows it. He seems to be learning to read the 'see and say' way. Whatever works for the individual child I always say.

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After naptime, the Podlings did some autumn colouring. I printed some leaf pictures I found online and put out some autumn colour pencils for them to use. I cut out their pictures and added them to the autumn display board I've put above their table in the kitchen.

Leaf colouring

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The colder months are all about cinnamon and spices for me, so our next activity was baking some leaf-shaped spice biscuits. Tom got bored and wandered off (he's not into baking), but Lily was there till the end (and beyond...she was 'washing up' for half an hour!). I quickly iced the biscuits while I was getting their tea ready and the results were quickly snatched up for pudding.

Autumn leaf spice biscuits

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After tea, we played with some leaf shapes I had cut out of paper earlier in the day. We pretended to be trees in the autumn and dropped dozens of paper leaves all over the carpet and each other. We also played 'who can find a red/green/orange/yellow leaf', which is good colour practice for Lily (not that she needs it!). We learnt a new autumn song, read some autumn poetry and generally had a fun day.

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We're having a great time doing this and hopefully the Podlings are learning something at the same time. I have some more autumn-themed activities planned for the rest of the week. Hopefully the weather will dry up and we can go out and get some real leaves!

Our autumn display board in the kitchen. There's still space for some of the projects I have planned for later in the week.