Sorting Leaves & Seeds and Celebrating Autumn

Saturday is the first day of autumn, and we’re celebrating with a blog hop. Be sure to check out all of the ideas for autumn at the end of the post. The weather has been beautiful lately in Missouri. The days haven’t been too hot, there have been clouds, and there’s even been some rain! We’ve been taking advantage of this by spending time outside. On Saturday, we went for a nice long hike at a local conservation area. {I’ll post about that adventure soon.} We’ve been collecting leaves. After you collect them, what do you do next? You sort them!

Sorting Leaves and Seeds

We collected all of our leaves, seed pods, pine needles, and pinecones in a large basket. When we got home, we sorted our collection.

Aiden picked up the pine needles. I asked him in which container he wanted to place them. He chose the red one. He picked up more pine needles. I asked where they went. He put them in a different color. I told him all of the pine needles go in the same container because they are the same. We will put different things in the other containers. He didn’t care. He picked up the pine needles and moved them from one container to another. His actions were actually helping to develop skills necessary for sorting. Placing objects into containers or even gathering objects into piles, organizing things into lines or groups is a step towards sorting separate things.

When Aiden was finished moving the pine needles around, we placed them all in one container. I placed a leaf, a seed pod, and a pinecone each in one of the other containers.

Aiden picked up a leaf from the bucket. I asked him where the leaf goes. He chose the blue container with the other leaf. Now he’s getting the concept of sorting. We continued sorting things from the bucket to the containers as long as he was content.

As Aiden sorted, I talked about the similarities between leaves and pine needles.

• Both are green on the tree.
• Both turn brown when they fall of the tree.
• Both collect energy from the sun to provide food for the plant. {You can use the word photosynthesis.}

We talked about the similarities between the seed pods and pinecones.

• Both grow on trees.
• Both contain seeds.
• Seeds can be planted to grow new trees.

Sorting is an important skill for both math and science. In science, we tend to use the word classify, but the concept is the same. Organizing like things together into logical groupings is what sorting is all about. You’ll notice your toddler natural start to group objects. Talk about what he is doing. Encourage him. Provide things for her to sort.

Sorting can lead to graphing as well. Notice how I’ve labeled my picture below? I made a picture graph of what we sorted. To add numbers to your graph, you can count the objects as you sort them.

Our {Nearly} Autumn Adventures

It’s not even autumn yet, but we’ve already had several great adventures that are perfect for autumn.

• We turned collecting leaves into a preschool learning experience.
• We created art with leaves inspired by Lois Ehlert’s Leaf Man.
• We examined our apple tree to see if the apples were ready.
• We looked at the fall flowers and insects on our hike.
• We observed animal tracks and inferred what had walked on the trail.

Celebrating Autumn

This blog hop is being co-hosted by the following blogs:

Blogging With Kids | hands on : as we grow | Rainy Day Mum | Love, Play, Learn | AngeliqueFelix.com
3 Dinosaurs | Sugar Snips | Kitchen Counter Chronicles | Inspiration Laboratories | Playful Learners
Confessions of a Montessori Mom | Two Big Two Little | Go Kid Yourself | Red Ted Art | Life At The Zoo

Link up your autumn posts and check out what everyone else has done.

Happy Autumn!

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