Plans, poems and Autumn leaves.

Week one is done and dusted! The difference between the kids on Day One and this Monday is amazing. They are much more confident, and it's far easier to hold their attention for longer period of time (such as through a Whole Rhyme).

And so, the plans have begun. To start with, we (being myself and the two other pre-school teachers) came up with some broad learning areas to cover this Autumn:

• Practical Life
• The Environment
• All About Me
• Autumn Time
• Shape
• Colours
• Pre-Writing
• Number
• Animals

Then we each came up with a bunch of stuff under these headings; from structured activities (e.g. Matching Mommas to Babies in learning about Animals) to gentle reminders (e.g. Hanging your coat on your own peg, for Practical Life).

And so I've begun gathering ideas to match these themes. I've made up my three week plan and I am already getting stuck in! (If you remember, each of us teachers has a group of 10 kids each week, and we rotate and repeat our plans until all the children have had a go).

My three week plan is quite simple this time, being that it's still early days. I've divided it into 4 basic areas:

• My Home
• Physical Activities
• Circle Time
• Autumn

Some of these will overlap too, extending the learning into all areas of their day. For example, the My Home project involves both an art project and a follow-on at circle time.

Today, I got started on an Autumn craft project. Here's how it went.

1. I used Shirley Hughes' great book, Out and About, to show the kids gorgeous water-colour paintings of a day in the park in Autumn. We discussed how the trees were all different colours, how the children were wrapped up warm, and how the leaves had fallen to the ground. Then I read them a poem from the book; 'Misty'.

Mist in the morning, raw and nippy

Leaves on the pavement, wet and slippy.

Sun on fire behind the trees

Muddy boots, muddy knees.

Shop windows lighted early,

Soaking grass; dewy, pearly.

Red, lemon

Orange and brown

Silently, softly

The leaves float down.

 

The last four lines are my favourite!

2. We each took a brown crayon and a sheet of paper and traced an outline of our hands. Then we shaded these in. These were our tree branches!

3. The next step is the best bit. I put out trays of paint in yellow, brown, orange, red and green. (We had to mix paints to make orange and brown, a whole lesson in itself!). We stuck our thumbs into the paint and then onto our trees- and made leaves from the thumbprints! I have to say, it looked pretty great. Everyone was wearing aprons, so we were all clean, but I was surprised at how much the kids wanted to stay clean! Washing their hands afterwards was very important, they informed me.

Here are our creations!

 

What I love about it is that each child's tree is totally different from the others. Some of the kids really enjoyed mixing the colours, and so their leaves are less defined and more of a blur! One little girl showed me how some of the leaves weren't on the tree because they were 'floating down'.

A simple autumn craft to start off with, but so effective!