When fall time comes there are at least three items we must use in the classroom. The three items are leaves, pumpkins and apples. Using these things to enhance my lessons has brought smiles and learning to my students.
- Leaves are great to use to make fall pictures. Leaf rubbings are made by putting a real leaf under a piece of paper or fabric, vein side up. Take a crayon and color over the leaf until the shape of the leaf, including the veins, show on the paper. This is a great time to use those broken crayons. Next, move the leaf to a different position under the paper and use another color. Repeat the process until the page is covered. We have used this leaf rubbing process to fill a giant pumpkin shape on newsprint to put on the bulletin board. We have also used this idea to make holiday cards for Halloween or Thanksgiving. We decorated the paper with leaf rubbings, folded the paper into a card and then added the words. Once we did leaf rubbings on a large piece of newsprint and made a thank you mural for our principal. It’s fun to get different shapes of leaves. The leaf gathering process can be fun also. Some teachers have taken the students on a nature walk to collect leaves and then used them in a later lesson for leaf rubbings.
- Pumpkins can be used to enhance math lessons. One activity would be to estimate how many seeds are in the pumpkin and then cut it open to count the seeds. Some teachers have made Jack-o-Lanterns with their class to have the students identify the different shapes used to make the face. They used circles, triangles, rectangles, and squares at least. Another fun thing to do is to take pumpkin pies and cut them into pieces demonstrating the fractions of a pie. The students can then solve problems like; If we have 24 students and we cut each pie into six pieces, how many pies will we need to give everyone a piece? Pumpkin soup is also fun to make in a crock pot. A list of ingredients is sent home and each student adds the ingredient they were able to bring. Another fun activity is to have pumpkin shaped bread bowls and a variety of soups to put in them. You can have a little feast. You can have the students write about the activities they experienced.
- Apples are great to use during the fall time especially if you are in Chicago, Illinois where they have apple orchards. One activity is to cut the apples into different fractions, i.e., halves, quarters, eighths, sixteenths. You can even do thirds and sixths easily. Afterwards, you can give the students caramel topping to eat with the apples. Having a variety of types of apples is always a fun activity. The students can see how they differ in color, shape and taste. Apples can also be sorted by color, shape, type and size. The students can count how many are red, yellow, green, multicolored, etc., and make graphs with the data. Apples can be used to prompt students to write, compare and contrast essays, for example. An activity my students have enjoyed is sticking whole cloves in apples and then tying a ribbon on it to make a closet air freshener. They love to see them get all wrinkled up. They also smell really good.
These activities have helped make learning more fun for my students. Having the hands on activities also helped my students understand certain concepts more quickly. Using leaves, pumpkins and apples in teaching activities have brought learning along with laughter into my classroom. It makes me look forward to fall because there are so many fun things to do with these items.
