Autumn Leafs: crafts, games, science

"Love is where attentiveness to nature starts, and responsibility toward one’s home landscape is where it leads."-John Elder, from Stories of the Land: A Place-Based Environmental Education Anthology

Grade Level: Elementary

Objective: Students will walk through the autumn landscape paying attention to the details of their environment.  Collecting leafs, playing autumn hike bingo and other forest games, and conducting a series of observations of the changing ecosystem will scaffold the way for a short lesson on the science of leaf color.

 Today we:
-Played "Fall Walk bingo"
-Collected autumn leafs
-Sat on yard blankets under the cottonwood trees watching leafs fall
-Observed the differences in falling leafs and acted out the ways in which we noticed leafs falling
-Played "Snag Tag"--a tree identification game where the leader/tagger (me) calls out a species which is "base" (examples: Cottonwood, Douglas Fir, Western Red Cedar) that all the players have to tag in order to be "safe"
-Played "Lynx" a game in which the leader (me) plays the lynx and the players pretend to be snowshoe hares.  In order to be "safe" the players have to freeze every time the leader shouts "lynx."  If a player moves or laughs during the designated time he/she is eaten.

-Pressed and preserved leafs using wax paper and a warm iron
-Discussed the science of changing leaf color and watched a short video explaining the concept