Sunday's Lullabies

Self-Portraits with Leaves

For the final activity, the children created self-portraits of themselves using leaves. I decided to use Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert again for this activity and focused on the part of creating a self-portrait. An anchor chart describing what "self-portrait" meant was created and photographs of painters who have created portraits of themselves such as Van Gogh, Picasso, Frida Kahlo were shown to the children and we discuss how they were alike and how they were different. This was part of a lesson, I created for the children during the week with the purpose of using as an extension to the final activity of this project. And, so the journey of creating their self-portrait began, the only catch was that instead of using paint, they were going to use leaves!





I really enjoyed doing this project with the children. I was able to have more one-on-one time with them and learned lots about them. Although its a lot of work and sometimes it was a let down because I had to change things, it was a learning experience and like I have said before it is always great to learn how to let go. This project is something that I will encourage all teachers out there to do with your class, it will be a lot of work but it will end up been the most rewarding thing for both you and the students.

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

For the third activity, I set up a provocation with the book titled, Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert and a series of materials for the children to use. I will say that this activity was what really sparked the children's interest and brought many smiles and excitements. The activity began by reading Leaf Man and discussing the different things that the author created using the leaves and told them that was exactly what they will be doing!


I had the book on display for the children to use as a reference. For the materials, we use real and fake leaves, as well as other natural materials such as; a magnifying glass, pine corn, popsicles, among other things. The magnifying glass was provided because N* was interested in the "little lines" on the leaves that he noticed when we did the second activity. Since he was interested in the "little lines" on the leaves, I showed the children a diagram that shows the parts of the leaves and kept it on display. As the children work on their art piece, some of them were calling me to show me the parts of their leaves.

How Can We Use Leaves?

For the second activity, we read Leaves by David Ezra Stein and learned that we could use leaves in different ways, just as the character of the book did and so our phase II began. The children used leaves as part of their material to create their art piece. We discussed in what ways we could use leaves and what we can create with them. The children's responses were added to our web map. As the children created their art piece, I went around the table asking them what they were creating and the answers vary from each group that I met during center time.

Some children were puzzled at first of what they were supposed to do with the leaves placed in front of them and in many instances, I had to tell them what to do. Yet, many of them were quite excited to be able to use leaves and were quick to choose their favorite leaves to create their art piece.





Because I was placed in a half-day Preschool program, I only completed each activity during center time and it was in some ways a more teacher-direct activity but I did listen to the children's conversation and interest and tried to incorporate them in each activity.