{Playing Through Autumn Day 17} Books We Love: Autumn Poetry

Poetry is perfect for little ears. The cadence, the (sometimes) rhyming, the short little bursts of lovely words...L absolutely adores it! There are some really fantastic collections of seasonal poetry out there, and we would like to share our favorites with you.

Autumnblings

Poems & Paintings by Douglas Florian

Autumn: An Alphabet Acrostic

Written by Steven Schnur

Illustrated by Leslie Evans

A Chill in the Air: Nature Poems for Fall and Winter

Poems by John Frank

Illustrated by Mike Reed

Do your children enjoy poetry? What sort of books are you reading this season?

{Playing Through Autumn Day 16} Halloween Rainbow Rice

Happy October! This is my absolute favorite month of the year (so I feel really lucky to have been born within it!). It's just such a feast for the senses. If you've ever happened to find yourself reading this blog, you know how much we love sensory activities in this house! L has been making the most of autumn rainbow rice, sensory bottles, and cinnamon play dough, among other things, which has made our house just full of autumn-themed play opportunities. Now that we've entered October, I wanted to present her with a sensory activity with a Halloween twist, and so I give you Halloween Rainbow Rice.

I made up two huge batches of rice, one in black and one in orange. (For the method, click here.) I was so excited to come across black food coloring - I'd never seen it before, so I snatched up a bunch! You never know when you might need to color something black.  After the rice dried, I mixed it together and tossed it into L's sensory tub.

For added fun, I included some miniature jack-o-lantern buckets and some small plastic spiders. (They're hard to see in this photo, but trust me, they're there! They have managed to startle me a time or two since we started this tub!) L loves scooping the rice into the pumpkins and pouring it out - such a fun and simple activity!

Has Halloween play started yet in your house? What kind of fun Halloween activities are you doing?

Happy October!

Happy October!

{Playing Through Autumn Day 15} Books We Love: Autumn Leaf Book Round-Up

One of the things I'm most looking forward to sharing with L this autumn is jumping into a huge pile of crunchy fall leaves. We're still (somewhat impatiently) waiting for the leaves to change and fall, but in the meantime we're reading tons of books on the very subject.

Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf

Written & Illustrated by Lois Ehlert

Autumn Leaves

Photos & Text by Ken Robbins

Leaf Jumpers

Written by Carole Gerber

Illustrated by Leslie Evans

Mouse's First Fall

Written by Lauren Thompson

Illustrated by Buket Erdogan

Fall Leaves Fall!

Written by Zoe Hall

Illustrated by Shari Halpern

The Little Yellow Leaf

Written & Illustrated by Carin Berger

Fletcher and the Falling Leaves

Written by Julia Rawlinson

Illustrated by Tiphanie Beeke

Leaf Man

Written & Illustrated by Lois Ehlert

There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Leaves!

Written by Lucille Colandro

Illustrated by Jared Lee

We're Going on a Leaf Hunt

Written by Steve Metzger

Illustrated by Miki Sakamoto

I hope you'll be able to start leaf jumping soon! In the mean time, you might like to check out some fabulous fall board books, awesome autumn nonfiction picture books, and a round up of books about harvest. Are there any leaf books you would add to this list?

{Playing Through Autumn Day 14} Autumn Lego Printing

One of the best things about seasonal art projects, I think, is that you can take something you'd do any day of the year and sneak in those seasonal colors to make the activity match the season. This was the case recently when L and I did some Lego printing using autumn colors.

For Lego printing, you simply press the top of the Lego into a blob of paint and then put it to paper. It ends up looking pretty cool. In fact, I had to join L on this activity because she made it look so fun!

As per my usual, I talked with L about red, yellow, and orange being colors we see in the fall. She just loved slamming the Legos onto her paper!

Mommy's final work:

(I thought the prints ended up looking like leaves swirling in the air. My husband quickly pointed out that, in fact, they looked like uniform circles in fall colors. Everybody's a critic!)

L's final work:

("Now THAT," says Dad, "is an autumn picture!" Could you share some of that encouragement over in this direction, honey?)

At any rate, this was a lot of fun. I have to hand it to L, she certainly knows how to make a painting glow!

{Playing Through Autumn Day 13} Scooping Seeds

Most toddlers find such joy in the simple act of scooping and pouring. L is no exception. It is one of her absolute favorite things to do, which is why sensory tubs are such a huge hit in our house. I recently decided to ramp things up a bit with a Montessori-inspired scooping and pouring activity for L, with a little added autumn flair.

I filled a bowl with popcorn kernels that I nicked from our popcorn sensory tub and put it on a tray with three miniature Halloween pumpkins (the plastic kind with an opening at the top). I placed everything on a cookie sheet to help minimize a big mess and added in a tablespoon-sized measuring spoon. (Note: I went with a tablespoon based on the size of the opening on the pumpkins. Anything smaller wouldn't have picked up many of the kernels and anything larger would have made it very difficult to pour into the pumpkins without creating a big mess. I wanted to help L be successful in this activity and limit potential frustrations.)

This activity required a lot of fine motor control in the scooping with a smaller spoon and pouring into small containers. Some of the kernels didn't make it into the pumpkins (but of course!) which led to another wonderful opportunity for fine motor practice: using those fingers to pick up the rouge kernels.

In addition to her love of scooping and pouring, L has also been very interested in counting recently. It was fun for her to count, "One, two, three..." as she poured into each pumpkin, and we were also able to count a few of the runaway popcorn kernels.

How are you engaging your kids this autumn? What sorts of activities do they enjoy?

{Playing Through Autumn Day 12} Mama-Made Books for Fall

I have always loved creating teacher-made books for my students, and now that I'm a mama, I'm bringing that love home for my own little one. This year I'm really excited about the way they turned out, and the fact that L really likes them. They do take a little time to make, but it is totally worth it if that's the sort of thing that you enjoy.

The first one I made is a take on Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? but in this case it's Autumn, Autumn, What Do You See? This is kind of great because thanks to Bill Martin, Jr. I don't even have to come up with my own rhyme scheme and I get to incorporate lots of photos and vocabulary concerning fall. 

To make this book, I simply divided fall-colored sheets of construction paper in half to create the pages for the book. Then I found photos on the internet of various fall items (leaf, pumpkin, scarecrow, acorns, etc.), printed them, and used doubled-sided tape to mount them onto the front side of each page.

Next I typed up the rhyme and put it on the back page of the corresponding photo, like so:

This book can really be as long or as short as you'd like, and incorporate anything relating to autumn within the rhyme. Mine ended up being about ten items.

Finally, I sent the sheet through a laminator (thankfully, a friend has one that she lets me use!), punched holes down the side, and used binder rings to create the finished product. Thanks to the lamination, it's nice and sturdy and I'm really not too concerned about it getting torn up.

L absolutely loves this book! She knows how to anticipate the rhyme and matching picture, thanks to all the times we've read Brown Bear. I also love it because it has made her really aware of the things we see everywhere we go during the fall: scarecrows, Indian corn, and the like. 

The second book I made this year is a songbook filled with songs about autumn and corresponding photographs. I made this one in much the same manner as the one above, although this one was slightly easier. I went through old resource files and preschool websites looking for lots of songs about autumn. I picked my ten favorite, found photos that illustrated some aspect of the song, and used them to create a book.

For the songbook, I used half sheets of construction paper as before, with the photo on one side, and the corresponding song on the back.

There are so many websites out there full of great seasonal songs for kids. I just googled something like "autumn songs for kids" and ended up finding a lot of really great stuff. Now L has even more photographs at her fingertips of autumn goodness, and she gets to learn a ton of new songs to boot! These are also great for a classroom setting (I have several at school) and you can make them for just about anything: Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, winter, whatever you like.

Mommy-made materials are loads of fun! Do you have anything to share? I'd love to hear all about it!