Leaves are Falling

Originally published October 16th

Hello everyone,

The foliage definitely peaked out this past week, and we were revelling in it. We started the week by jumping in a leaf pile, and really immersing ourselves in the sound and smell and feel of fallen leaves. We buried each other in the pile, we threw leaves at each other, and we threw them up into the air to watch them fall again. We even had circle time sitting in the leaves, because it was so exciting and joyful to sit in fallen leaves that no one wanted to leave.

We read Going on A Leaf Hunt, and then did just that. We read Fletcher and the Falling Leaves, and had a very nice discussion with lots of good questions from the children about why leaves fall at this time of year, what happens to the leaves over the winter, (why are they not there anymore when the snow melts?), and what the trees will do again in the springtime. We talked about color as well and made a leaf rainbow by matching the leaves that we found to colored paper. Some leaves had many different colors in them. We read Fall Walk on Wednesday, examined the beautiful illustrations of different leaf shapes, and learned some of the tree names that go with the different shapes. On Thursday we read Leaves, a story of a young bear enjoying leaves throughout the year, and then we made steamed, stuffed cabbage leaves with cabbage from Zena's garden. We also made wax paper leaf windows with some of our dried leaves. There were some fun projects going on in aftercare as well. Lots of busy creativity right now!

We saw the blue heron again on the pond. We ate the last apples from the little wild apple trees by the community garden. We watched the colors on the mountain change each day. We caught leaves as they fell all around us to the ground. The changes are so powerful this time of year that there is much to take note of every day as we sit in our forest snack spot and do our daily "noticing" practice.

Get ready for some cooler temps next week. Gloves or mittens and a hat may be good ideas some mornings soon. We will continue talking about leaves for another week, and then we will move on to spiders.

May you all be happy, may you be healthy, may you be peaceful, may you be filled with joy.

Jessica