Creating Our Own Leaves

For our fourth activity, I wanted the children to learn the names of the leaves we used from our "creating with leaves" activity. We discussed some of the names of the different leaves shown on the book, Leaf Man, but didn't get into detail due to the time restriction. I thought that the children wouldn't be too interested in knowing the names but some of the children noticed the difference between some of the leaves provided for the activity and were referencing back to the book. Thus, I decided to expand this knowledge for our fourth activity by creating our own leaves using playdough as our main material.

For this activity, I used Why Do Leaves Change Color? as a reference book. I placed different leaves on the table and ask the children to tell me the differences they see on the leaves.
"This one has pointing things, like fingers! Let me count them... yeah, it has five fingers just like me."-R
"Yes, it does have five blades and they look like fingers. This leaf is a maple leaf"- Me
"Some are yellow and red but this one is kind of brown"- L
"That us an Elm leaf"-Me

The children continue to compare the different leaves we had and their responses were added to our web map. I added a small poster with pictures of some of the leaves we had and their names for the children to have as a reference. This led us to our activity, the children choose the leaf that they liked the most and made a 3-dimensional version of it using playdough.

Creating with Leaves Education Project Approach Student Teaching