Leaf Activities for Preschoolers

Last week when we dropped the kindergartner off at school, the trees outside the school were still mostly green.  This Monday, as we pulled up to the building, a brilliant display of red, yellow, and orange greeted us.

The preschooler was thrilled!

He started picking up some of his favorites (red) as soon as he got out of the car.  He deliberately walked through the leaves that were piled around each tree, crunching all the way back to the car once his sister was inside the building.  I’ve never seen him so energized at the morning drop off; he was literally running tree to tree, giggling and picking up leaves for me to hold.

I knew that a few leaf activities were just the thing that morning!

The first thing we did when we got home was to try our hand at a few old fashioned leaf rubbings.

I showed him how to put one leaf at a time under the paper, with the vein-side up.  The hard part was getting him to understand that he had to hold his crayon so he was coloring with the side and not the tip.  I loved his smile when he saw each leaf magically appear on his paper; he was so proud of his work!  (To make it easier, I helped hold his paper down while he used the crayon.  For multiple children, you might want to try using tape.)

Because he was so excited by the leaves, I wanted to try a few more activities with them.  We sorted the leaves by size, and then by color.  (They were all maple leaves or we might have tried doing them by type.)

Then we put our leaves in order, from largest to smallest.

By then our time working with leaves was over.  At least for now.

Maybe we’ll wait for a few of them to get brittle and try our hand at this leaf craft his sister and I did last year.

What activities have you done with leaves lately?

Looking for more fall leaf ideas?  Check out our Leaf Creatures!