Ever since I was a child, I’ve always been captivated by the beauty of the rich colors of the autumn leaves and the fun of jumping into a pile of autumn leaves and feeling their crunchy texture and hearing their crackling sounds. It makes me so happy when my preschoolers are able to enjoy sensory play-based activities with autumn leaves at this colorful time of year.
This autumn, my preschoolers and I thoroughly enjoyed a spontaneous painting activity using autumn leaves still attached to small twigs as our brushes.
I put out a few pallets of seasonal colors of paint: red, orange, yellow, green, and brown. The preschoolers were invited to dip their leaf-brushes into the paint and use these to paint their own works of art. Many of them lingered in this painting activity just a bit longer than when we used brushes as this was a new experience. They enjoyed observing the different effect that these leaf-brushes created on their pages. Some even chose to glue their dried leaf-brush twig onto their painting to complete their artwork.