Honestly? I wasn’t ready to dive into all things fall just yet, but when we returned home from our Seattle and Vancouver trip to freezing cold weather (we’re talking zero overnight and 4 degrees by the time we were heading off to school), I decided we’d better get on it in case we skip fall altogether this year and transition straight into winter {fingers crossed that DOES. NOT. HAPPEN.} So today, while Sam and I were out on our morning walk / scoot, we kept our eyes peeled for beautiful fall leaves and collected them in a little bag along the way. Once we got home, we rinsed them off, dried them, and put them to work in all kinds of really fun, really simple activities, one of which was this fall leaf colour sort.
Here’s what we found… There wasn’t ton of colourful leaves on the ground just yet, but we still managed to find several leaves in browns, reds, oranges, yellows, and greens which was good enough for us!
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Now just for fun, we decided to do this little activity in our beloved Ikea sensory table… When we were down in Vancouver, I picked up 4 of the smallest TROFAST bins with sorting activities just like this in mind (previously we just had the 2 larger bins) and they worked perfectly. I folded pieces of brown, red, orange, and yellow card stock in half, pressed them down into the base of the bins, and our fall leaf colour sorting game was ready to go!
That being said, you certainly don’t need a fancy sensory play table for this activity… You can just as easily tape 4 pieces of card stock or construction paper to the table or floor or use a set of 4 bowls or containers. Work with what you have on hand!
Next up, I set the leaves around the edges of the table and invited Sam to come and take a look.
Given that he’s 3 {soon turning 4} and we’ve done plenty of sorting activities (our car and truck colour sorting was one of his faves), this leaf colour sort was a total breeze for him even though I wondered if a few of the leaves might be a little tricky….
They weren’t (hah!) He basically moved at this speed until every last leaf was in the bin of the corresponding colour.
Sorting is such an important skill and building block for other future skills that I absolutely would not consider something like this – something that’s really “easy” for him – a waste of time. Reinforcement is super important for kiddos and “easy” activities are excellent for building confidence, so go on and do those too easy activities anyways!
See that yellow and read leaf over the edge of the table? When activities are fairly easy for your little one, it’s a great opportunity to guide the learning a little further, really discuss what’s happening, and model new language. When Sam decided that that leaf should go in the yellow bin (I would have done the same), I said, “Oh interesting. How did you decide to put that leaf in the yellow container?” We then went onto to talk about how it’s MOSTLY yellow, more yellow than red, even though the TIP is red, etc. and it was the perfect chance to reflect on his choice and use some comparison language in our conversation.
Here’s a peek at the other two fun little things we used our leaves for…
Whew… After a long, snowy winter here in the Okanagan, I *think* spring might actually be here and I can’t tell you how good it feels! We arrived home on Good Friday after a week in Vancouver to find nearly all of our snow gone and despite the fact that it briefly snowed on both Easter Sunday and Monday, I feel like we’ve officially turned a corner. Sunshine, warmer temperatures, and little bits of green beginning to appear after months of snow and grey skies? Yes please!
In celebration, we spent a good part of our weekend outside… We brought the kids’ bikes out, set up our trampoline, did some yard work, and best of all – we did our very first nature activity of the season – a spring texture hunt! I can’t tell you how sweet my two little nature explorers were out in the yard searching for different textures with their clipboards in hand.
Now at 2 years old Sam absolutely didn’t need a clipboard or printable to collect / record his findings, but because he wants nothing more than to be exactly like his big sister at the moment, I decided to make him a modified spring texture hunt printable too and thank goodness I did! The moment he saw Miss G with her pencil and page clipped on her board, he shouted his go-to, ‘Too! Too! Sam too!’ and was pleased as punch when I passed him a clipboard of his very own.
I’ll share both down below, but for Grae I designed a more open-ended observation sheet that allowed her to sketch out the nature items she found plus come up with her own words to describe their textures. For Sam, I simplified and gave him boxes pre-labelled with texture words. Now for his recording sheet you could very well have your child draw the items, but Sam’s not there yet of course and in an effort to keep it as tactile and simple as possible, I decided that we’d help him glue his nature items right onto his sheet {which actually worked out really well}.
Kids, clipboards, and a glue stick in hand, we headed outdoors to see what we could find as far as interesting textures in nature go.
Needless to say, nature is FULL of all kinds of amazing textures and finding a bunch of different ones was a breeze right off the bat. I followed Sam’s lead and went off into this little corner filled with rocks, shrubs, a tree stump, and our little patch of remaining snow and together we gently touched things and talked about how they felt on our hands. I will say that while the whole clipboard part of this activity is totally unnecessary for little ones like Sam, the actual touching and describing part is fantastic. He carefully ran his little hands over the items and listened so intently as I used words like ‘bumpy’, ‘rough’, and ‘hard’ to describe them – so awesome for his vocabulary development!
Miss G immediately got to exploring, feeling things along the way, and recording the ones that really stood out as having an interesting texture on her observation sheet.
She really enjoyed coming up with words to describe the different textures and many times she had several words to describe a single nature object. This very cool leaf, for example, led to words like, ‘fuzzy’, ‘soft’, ‘furry’, and ‘tickley’, though in the end, she decided that its softness was its most prominent feature when it came to touch.
Sam actually really enjoyed adding to his observation sheet too. Brad or I would put a thick layer {or little clump} of glue down in a box, and he’d run over with his nature item and really press it on to ensure it would stick.
More than anything this was just a fun way to display his little collection of nature items he was so proud of.
Now I will say that not all of the nature items the kids found were necessarily ‘spring’ items (the crunchy brown leaves that have been hidden under the snow since fall, for example), but I decided that that really didn’t matter. It’s spring, the items were found during spring, and that was good enough for me! If you were doing this activity with your kiddos or students and wanted the focus to be specifically on spring items, however, you could of course specify that.
This whole idea, believe it or not, was inspired by a show the kids have been watching {and loving!} lately called SCOUT & The Gumboot Kids. Have you seen it before? Now if you know me, you know I’m not a huge fan of television for kids, but my kids do enjoy watching a show now and then {Grae especially} which leaves me bouncing between Netflix and Common Sense Media trying to find something that is not only appropriate, but also hopefully little bit inspiring or motivating too? {A tall order, I know…}
Well, I’m so glad I came across SCOUT & The Gumboot Kids. In the series, Scout, a sweet and smart mouse introduces the Gumboot Kids to a collection of clues that leads them outdoors to uncover the wonders of nature… Things like sunflowers filled with seeds, echoes, falling acorns, shadows, and constellations – all of the most important things!
Our spring texture nature hunt was inspired by this episode, The Soft Rock. Take a watch and let me know what you think. Easily my favourite thing about SCOUT & The Gumboot Kids is that the episodes truly inspire you to get outdoors with your kiddos – and how many television programs do that?! I also really love that each episode includes a mindful moment {something Miss G has been practicing since Kindergarten} and music by Jessie Farrell that is actually really enjoyable {because we all know that not all kids’ music is – hah!} I also really like that the episodes are around 5 minutes each and best of all? At just over two and at 7 and a half, both Sam and Grae find the shows interesting and engaging – win!
{US friends, you can watch by subscribing to Curious World or Kidstream. You can also subscribe to Kidstream via Amazon or Comcast Xfinity.}
In addition to SCOUT & The Gumboot Kids, I was lucky enough to preview two ‘spin off’ shows – DAISY & The Gumboot Kids {a crafty version filled with nature DIYs and led by SCOUT’s best friend DAISY} and JESSIE & The Gumboot Kids {a fun music-focused version featuring the talents of the same artist, Jessie Farrell who just released her third children’s album, Sparkle & Shine} and both are every bit as wonderful and inspiring as the original! Fun fact: SCOUT & The Gumboot Kids has won several awards both here in Canada and internationally, and while DAISY & The Gumboot Kids is brand new, it’s already been nominated for both Canadian and international awards too!
Alright, now back to our hunt…
Here’s how things ended. Grae probably could have kept on texture hunting for another hour or so, and Sam found a bunch really cool nature items but was ready to move onto other things before his collection sheet was fully complete – perfectly age appropriate in my opinion.
If you’d like to try this activity with your kids or students, feel free to use our printable observation sheets:
Enjoy your time outdoors with your little ones and be sure to check out The Gumboot Kids series when you have a chance!
And if you already have little SCOUT & The Gumboot Kids fans like I do, be sure to check out their new merchandise line. Miss G and I recently picked out a few things and she’s anxiously awaiting their arrival in the mail!
This post is sponsored by The Gumboot Kids. As always, all opinions and stories are my own and I only ever share things that we truly enjoy.
Fall has officially arrived here in Vancouver and it is absolutely beautiful. So today when Miss G suggested finishing off our day by going for a walk and park visit after school, she certainly didn’t have to convince me.
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