teach me mommy::fall leaves

With autumn's brilliant colors blazing all around, it seemed only right to make this week's teach me mommy about fall leaves. So that's just what we did. It was a brisk autumn morning, so I gave each girl a little ziplock to fill with all the fall treasures she could find. We played a little scavenger hunt to help reinforce colors too.

Find something red! Something yellow! Something borrowed! Something blue! Oh wait, wrong game.

Before we went outside we read Trick or Treat, Smell My Feet by Diane de Groat, and looked for the fall leaves on each page. (I forgot to find a fall/leaf themed book, so we made do with what we had!) Then we acted out the different stages a leaf goes through, we started by being a little ball on the floor for a winter leaf and then slowly stretched out our arms and legs for a spring leaf, stretched them out big for a summer leaf, and then started twisting and turning and finally the wind blew us away so we spun all around the room for a fall leaf. (You could turn on some music and let them pretend to be fall leaves being blown all around too.)

I gave each girl a cut-out white leaf I printed from here, a small paper plate with some glue on it, a little pile of cut-up colorful paper and a q-tip (to paint the glue onto the colored pieces of paper.) Then I said, did you see any white leaves outside? Noooo! Let's make them beautiful and colorful like the ones we picked outside!

The girls each had a turn helping me with the leaf cookie cutter. After the cookies had cooled, everyone got a small (tiny) bowl of frosting and got to choose which color she wanted to make her leaf: red, orange, or yellow. Of course, they all chose none of the above, but preferred a pink leaf instead, which worked out well because seriously how do you make red frosting!? They took their frosting-stirring very seriously and LOVED watching the white frosting turn from white to pink.

Three little peas in a pod. Mortal enemies or best friends.