It's free to crunch in the autumn leaves, so we've been doing loads of it. We talk about autumn every day, pointing out the bare trees and the different colours the leaves have turned. I wanted to bring home a piece of autumn so we had a memory of this special time.

STICKY ART
Sticky-back plastic is your best friend. I have no idea what it's called in NZ but it's that stuff people wrap books with (also a NZ thing - we never had to do that growing up in the UK!). If you can't find any - go old school and stick them down with PVA glue!

HOW TO:
🍂 We collected leaves. I recommend collecting freshly fallen ones which are more flat - ours were very old and a bit too curled up.
🍂 put out a sheet of sticky back plastic. I drew a leaf on mine as I intended to cut around it but our old leaves were too brittle! Fail!
🍂 I cut the plastic to fit the size of an A3 photo frame so that we could keep the art.
🍂 We stuck lots of leaves to the plastic, talking about the different shapes, colours and textures.
🍂 I backed the picture with white paper and put it in a frame. If your leaves are flatter and stick better, you could cut out a leaf shape so that you had a leaf made of leaves!

AGE AND STAGE?!
I've been doing sticky activities with August since he was 8 months old - do not underestimate your little one!

LANGUAGE OPPORTUNITIES
It's time to talk about all things Autumn! The weather, the temperature, the colours, what we wear, what we see, what happens to nature. This is a real teaching opportunity.
There's also lots of chance to talk about textures - crunchy, soft, smooth, bumpy leaves.

Tried it? Tag us! Even if your babe just crunched the leaves in their hands, it's a great (and mostly free) experience!