Learning About Leaves

The last week of September has brought us to explore more about leaves.  The rapid change in colors and the rate of how they fall from the trees has ignited Vito’s interest on leaves thus we worked on some activities based on these interests.  Below are some of the activities (and ideas) on leaf studies and links to the resources that we used.

Life Cycle of Apples for Preschoolers

Autumn time is apple season and the perfect time to learn about them!  We started our “apple” week last Monday and today Vito and I just finished learning where apples came from.  I was so inspired by our Water Cycle activity (Vito loved this activity so much!) that I decided to do the same approach with our apple study.

FREE Pinecone Letter and Number Cards

My freebie of the month is no other than the pinecone letters and number cards!  Our pumpkin and apple has been very popular lately so I wanted to share these pinecone cards for free!

Hands-on Learning on Herbs and Spices

I needed to discard some herbs, but before doing so I decided to whip a sensorial activity with the boys to make use of these scented plants.  I already have Herbs and Spices learning materials from years ago, so the preparation was quite easy.  I also added more spices like turmeric, cumin, black peppercorn, garlic, ginger, and cloves.

FREE TREE Matching Cards Activity

This is a matching and memory game I made for Vito during our Plants and Trees Unit Study.  He absolutely loved this!  I regretted that I didn’t make more, because he kept on asking for more matching games.

Montessori Inspired Life Cycle of a Green Bean Plant

This is a follow-up activity on our Montessori Inspired Parts of a Plant.

After learning about the parts of a plant, Vito and I talked about how plants grow.  We walked around the estate and identified baby plants, some of them were just actually sprouting off the ground and this amazed Vito.  We also read the book How A Seed Grows to go along with our activity, this is a really good book!  The book illustrates the different stages of a plant’s (bean plant) life, from the preparations to planting up to the the part where the grown plant needs to be moved into a ground soil.  We have a few of these Read and Find Out books and Mavi loves to use them as reference.  Anyway, aside from the book, I also used the very beautiful Life Cycle of a Green Bean Plant from Safari Toob and a homemade life cycle cards (this are now available in my shop, Early Childhood Life Cycle Mats).

Montessori Inspired Parts of a Plant

It always excites me to introduce new things to Vito.  Our recent activity is learning about plants, specifically in this post, the parts of a plant.  I love doing plant study with the boys.  I’ve been doing this with Mavi since he was 2 years old, and I love doing it all over again with Vito!  Printed materials used in the activities were all homemade, and some were used during Mavi’s preschool days.   This is Vito’s second year of plant study, and you can read related studies here:

• Introducing plants to toddlers
• Collection of botany lessons for preschoolers
• Bean seed study
• How plants grow

Teaching Toddlers How Plants Grow

After our watercress activity, I introduced Vito to the life cycle of a green bean plant using Safari Ltd Life Cycle of a Green Bean Plant and the cards from The Wise Owl Shop.  Check out some of the activities that we worked on during the past few days that demonstrate how plants grow to toddlers.

Growing Watercress with Kids at Home

Vito is 33 months old.

For the second week of August, we’re learning about plants!  So to start with, the boys and I grew watercress at home and they totally love it!  Another activity that is suited for siblings!  Take a look at how Vito and Mavi worked on this together.