Exploring Fall

The students have been noticing the fall changes outside by observing the trees in our yard. Many, many leaves have found their way into the classroom over the past few weeks!
We decided we should follow this interest and do some investigating about fall. The students have begun to share their wonders about fall.

M.W- I wonder how they change colour?

P.D- I wonder why they change colour?

A.R- I wonder when it’s fall they change to another colour?

A.A.- I wonder why the leaves turn different colours?

N.M- I wonder why the leaves is turning a yellow, and red and orange and I saw blue on my coat?

E.K.- I wonder why there are different colours of leaves and they are turning to colours, they fall on lots of leaves and they change different colours?

I.S- I wonder why there’s yellow?

M.P- I see red leaves , I wonder why they are red?

A.Ah.- I see a little bit of brown on that leaf and a little bit of yellow on it, I wonder why they have lots of brown?

B.G- I wonder why the leaves turn different colours?

A.H- I wonder why the stem parts is sometimes different colours ?

P.D- I wonder why some stems are big and some are small?

A.K- I wonder why some are two different colours?

M.W- I wonder why there are lots of veins in leaves?

We will continue to investigate these wonders in order to learn new information.

To encourage the students to use their observation skills we have had many opportunities to observe leaves using more than just our eyes. We have been using our hands to feel leaves and our noses to smell them. 

The students shared their observations:

A.K.- I smell it’s salad

A.R- it feels like salad

M.P- I see a red stem with little bit red and there is lots of green on my leaf 

A.Ah- I see small dot 

M.W- I see the veins and I see dots and I feel the line veins  

E.K- I got a lines on the leaf and they have a cross and they have lines

M.F- I see some dots, yellow

A.P- green

I.S- red

N.M- I have a pink and little bit of green and brown 

A.C- I got a little bit of green and I got 4 dots, and its red 

D.M- there’s a little bit of pink and it has some stripes on it

M.A- small yellow leaf

A.A- red and black and green and white  

H.W- red 

S.C- I feel a raised line on the back

R.H- my leaf is green and big green because part of it broke 

Y.M- green and blue 

J.A- green 

P.D- I have a little black on my stem 

Ms. Tompkins- why do leaves have a stem?

D.A- because you can hold it

N.M- you can hold it with the stem when you find a leaf

M.W- I think it’s to hold it on the tree

We also wanted to use our observation skills to find out what leaves we had. We set up a provocation to encourage the students to explore and observe the leaves we had (the students brought in all these leaves!).

They began to sort the leaves as a way to find out what leaves we had

They sorted the maple leaves 

Working together to sort by colour

The final product, they chose to sort our leaves by colour

 We set up a provocation to encourage the students to paint the leaves.

Their paintings turned out fabulous and we have them displayed in the classroom around the list the students brainstormed about fall colours.