Exploring Math and Science with Leaves

Hello! We are Cady and Emily from Follow Our Lead, Boston, delighted to be guest posters today on wikebaby.com! We follow our children’s interests, and support learning opportunities in authentic, meaningful ways at home and around the Boston area. Like Kelly, we embrace the outdoors in all four seasons. But, we think there is something extra special about fall in New England. We hope you enjoy our post and we’d love to hear from you! Subscribe to our blog, follow us on Instagram or Facebook, and join the conversation. Our goal is to create a community to provide parents with new ideas and inspirations, including yours! The post we are sharing today is about exploring math and science with leaves found on a “wike!” It offers ideas for preschoolers – Grade 1.

It's easy to create simple math-based explorations out of just about anything. On a beautiful weekend this fall, we went with friends to farm. Like many New England farms in late September, the leaves were amazing. We found many, and compared their similarities and differences. Then, we looked closely at the veins, the shapes of each leaf, and classified into categories. We of course had to do some leaf rubbings (We've found this works particularly well with beeswax crayons). When we got home, we looked again at the leaves we collected and matched them to trees using the website What Tree is It?

Looking closely at veins and shapes, we compared leaves with images we found online, and learned the words pinnate, palate, and parallel.

This friend arranged leaves from biggest to smallest.

And this friend decided to categorize by color.

Leaf rubbing is always a fun activity. Place your leaves under a piece of paper and rub an unwrapped crayon over the page sideways. The more colors the better!

We brought home many treasures, inspired by a blog post on The Imagination Tree to start an autumn nature table! We may also add liquid watercolor over our rubbings for a beautiful finished piece.

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