During circle time we read/looked at a book called, What can I make with a leaf?. Then I dumped a big bag of leaves in the center of the circle. Then we went through the large task of sorting the leaves. We have done a lot of other sorting in preschool - so I knew they understood the principle - so I wanted to take this activity up a notch. TO make a good picture we just couldn't sort the leaves by color, or by size or by shape. We had to have MANY categories AND we had to make decisions about each leaf because one leaf could have gone into many different categories.
This process was really fun and very involved. The sorting was very open ended and child led. I let them make the categories, and discoer along the way when we should make a new category, and they got to decide which leaf went where. Some kids felt very passionate about a certain category and we got into some real heated debates about why one certain leaf should or shouldn't go into a certain category. It was great!
Then we put our leafs on our art table. During center time the children could come and create their leaf picture, man, animal, or design. I did not press these leaves, mostly because I knew it would be a lot of work - but they would have made better pictures, so next year I will take the several hours and press the leaves. But they still worked great because I picked all of them fresh of the trees that very morning - so none of them were breaking yet.
Some kids came up with their own pictures - some copied from the book. Either way they were learning a lot of great skills.
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