Babies use their senses to learn about the world around them. By providing your child with the freedom to explore within the constraints of an intentional play activity, you are teaching him concepts and skills without inhibiting his own self-discovery. In today's post I offer you an intentional fall-themed play activity based on a board book that is perfect for babies under 1.
My baby boy bookworm and I spend a lot of time playing. Play is good for his developing mind because babies learn through exploration by using all of their senses to analyze and experiment with their environment, much like a scientist would.
Often I set a few objects or toys on the floor and allow him to investigate them on his own. Sometimes he bangs them together, or pushes them in a playful way. Sometimes he holds an object in his hand and stares at it intently. Many times toys go into his mouth so he can suck and chew on them. I try to be as "hands off" as possible to allow him to discover his own cause-and-effect relationships.
Sometimes I offer him a more intentional learning environment. I still allow him to explore and play on his own, but the activity that I have chosen has been selected with the intent of him gaining a particular skill or concept.
Leaves is a board book that I picked up at our local library, and decided to use it as the focus of an intentional play activity. It is a book full of the colors of autumn, photographs of smiling children playing in leaves, and simple language to describe leaves and what fun they can be.
Here are some suggestions for reading this book with your baby:
1. Talk about and point out all of the fall colors in the book
2. Talk about the different kinds of leaves you see in the book
3. Talk about the different sights and sounds of autumn
4. Talk about the children in the book and why they might be dressed they way they are
If your child is an active crawler or walker who doesn't like to sit while reading, take advantage of your high chair or stroller like I often do.
Allow your child to handle the book after you are done reading and talking about it. Point out the words versus the pictures, the title and front cover, and demonstrate how to turn the pages.
Next, invite your child to do a planned play activity that relates to the book. As you do your activity, make connections back to Leaves and the concepts you might have talked about. Intentional learning activities might include:
Exploring and playing with leaves at the park, or at home (shown below)
Finding different kinds of leaves and collecting them while on a walk
Playing in a fall-inspired sensory bin full of different kinds of leaves
Painting a leaf cutout using finger paints in fall colors
Painting "leaves" on a tree with baby food in fall colors (shown below)
While your child plays, allow him to discover and explore on his own but offer guidance. Ask questions or narrate to help boost his language skills. What does the leaf feel like? What is this part of the leaf called? What does the leaf sound like if we crinkle it? What color is this leaf? How many leaves did we find?
I think you'll be surprised at the ways your little scientist baby explores and learns all by himself.
Can't find Leaves? Check out the touch-and-feel board book Fall.
Even baby bookworms need time outside. So in honor of Take a Child Outside Week, I am posting some of the activities we did to celebrate the outdoors.
In general, we try to spend time outside at least once a day, and we are fortunate enough to live near some great playgrounds, national parks, and gardens. This week, though, we made a couple of special "field trips".
Here's how we enjoyed being outside this week, and the things that we learned. OH, and last, but not certainly not least, the books we read!
1) We visited a pumpkin patch!
Unfortunately, however, we weren't able to actually PICK pumpkins thanks to a recent hurricane in our area and the field being very muddy (not to mention the pumpkins being rotten). But we still had fun enjoying the sunny day and warm weather.
If you make a trip to the pumpkin patch soon, you might want to try a few of these learning activities while you are there:
Point out new vocabulary words to your baby or toddler that have to with pumpkins: harvest, jack-o-lantern, patch, ripe, scarecrow, and vine
Collect a few souvenirs to bring home to use as the basis for an arts & crafts project. We chose to collect twigs (to be used in a project to create witches' brooms), acorns (we will be painting with them), and leaves (we will be sticking them between two sheets of contact paper to make a Fall placemat). Pine cones, hay, and of course, pumpkins would also be great items to bring home.
Baby bookworm looking for some items for arts & crafts
A pumpkin patch is a wonderful place to practice those color words! We talked about orange pumpkins, green apples, green grass, yellow hay, orange leaves, and brown acorns.
Book Pairing:
Most things we do begin with a book. Here's a perfect book pairing for your trip to the pumpkin patch.
Pumpkin Harvest by Calvin Harris
Pumpkin Harvest is a real-life tale of exactly what happens in a pumpkin patch. I love the glossary at the end of the book that outlines all of the new vocabulary. The photographs are beautiful and baby bookworm enjoyed learning all about pumpkin harvesting before we took our trip to the pumpkin patch.
2) We took a nature walk through a national park near our house.
Another sunny day allowed us to enjoy a walk through a national park that is practically in our backyard. I hate to admit, though, that this recent trip was the first time we had been there since the spring! I guess we needed this Take a Child Outside Week to appreciate the things we take for granted.
You might want to try a few of these ideas while on a nature walk of your own:
Have an A to Z scavenger hunt to sneak in a phonemic awareness lesson. What we did was started with A and tried to find an object that begins with A (we found acorns), then we moved on to B (we found bikes), and so forth. Baby bookworm thoroughly enjoyed.
Count things in nature. We collected lots and lots of acorns, and baby bookworm lined them on a bench and we counted them.
Counting acorns
Try to find letters hidden in nature. This one was a toughy for us! I thought that maybe I saw a letter A in a tree, but you be the judge! Hopefully you are more successful at this than we were.
Do you see a letter A in this tree's branches? It's hidden on the right
Book Pairing:
If you have a baby, the word book Fall would be great to read before your nature walk. We read this book all the time, although it is admittedly too easy for baby bookworm now!
Maisy's Nature Walk by Lucy Cousins is one that would work well with this "field trip". I will have to track it down because it looks cute and I'm hoping our next nature walk in the park isn't in another 6 months!
So get out there and enjoy the outdoors! Fall has just begun, but it will be winter before you know it. Time flies when you are having fun learning....
I am sharing this post on Jersey Family Fun. For other ways to celebrate Take A Child Outside Week, be
sure to visit this link up.
I am also sharing this post at Learning All The Time's link up called Favorite Resource This Week.
Fall is by far my favorite time of year. Not because of Sunday football, picking pumpkins, bonfires, spiked cider, or scary movies. No, Fall is my favorite time of year because I associate it with learning. There is something about "back to school" that has always excited me. It could be the fresh start, new textbooks, or the thought of writing papers, but whatever it is, I fell in LOVE with being "back to school" (and school in general) at a very young age.
I've been "back to school" in some way every Fall for as long as I can remember. There was grade school, then high school, followed by college, masters program, then doctoral program. Once I was done being a student, I worked in a school, and also taught as an adjunct professor.
This year is different, though. For the first time I'm not "back to school" in ANY way, shape, or form. So to give me that back to school feeling, baby bookworm and I played school this week. I guess you can say we play "school" all the time, but we tend to do many activities on the fly, and not necessarily organized around a theme.
In honor of back to school, baby bookworm and I worked our way through eight "subjects" with a bunch of Fall inspired learning activities.
Here's a recap of our "school" schedule:
Subject 1: READING
For reading "class" we are read books about Fall (shocker, right?) such as....
Fall
Bright baby touch and feel
This is a touch and feel, first-word "baby" book that is full of Fall words and objects. Even though I imagine this book is meant for a much younger audience than my baby bookworm, since she LOVED this book last Fall I thought we would take a look at it again. Repetition enhances learning, as you probably know. Plus, it's kind of amazing to me that in one year's time she can now say all of the words in the book, and "read" it on her own.
The bottom line: If you have a newborn or baby under the age of one, I highly recommend this book as a good way to introduce the season and work on receptive vocabulary. If you have a toddler, I think it's still a good book for expressive vocabulary and even to do a little sight reading.
This is a book about a bunch of mice who are preparing for a Fall harvest party and trying to keep a cat from ruining their fun. In order to do so, they decide to scare that "scary cat". Boo to You! has great illustrations that are incredibly crafty. Ehlert mixes different textured papers, string, and photographs to make beautifully artistic characters in this book. Baby bookworm loves the part of the book where they scare the cat, and also loves the last two pages that list a bunch fall items (many of which were new to her such as a gourd, pecan, and sycamore fruit). You and your baby bookworm might want to read this book cuddled up under a blanket with a warm cup of hot chocolate - it just gives you that kind of a feeling.
Baby bookworm has been on an Arthur kick lately. Some of the other Arthur books in the series can be quite lengthy, but I found this one to be the perfect compromise between too easy and completely overwhelming.
In this story, Arthur is given the task of raking leaves from their yard - which he doesn't find very fun! But with the help of a few of his best friends, he finds the job done in no time, and they all end up enjoying themselves along the way.
This is a great book to help get you in an Autumn mood because it reminds you of all of the fun things you can do, only during this time of the year. The story repeats the line, "I know it's autumn when...." which is a fabulous way to begin a discussion with your baby bookworm about how the two of you know when it's autumn.
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While reading these books to your baby bookworm don't forget to work on concepts of print, and explicitly point out and talk about any new vocabulary you may encounter (for strategies on how to do this, visit here).
Also have a discussion about Fall, and remember to refer back to these books if you do any other Fall inspired activities. Making connections between old and new knowledge is one easy way to help aid learning. Read on to see how I've used these books to make connections among different aspects of baby bookworm's knowledge.
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Here's a list of some of the Fall vocabulary we learned with the help of these books: Gourd, Autumn, Jack-o-lantern, Harvest, Squirrel, Bonfire, Rake, Mum, Acorn, Hayride, Apple, Indian corn, Pile of leaves
Subject 2: MATH
For our math lesson we played a sorting counting game. What I did was assemble little acorns out of construction paper ahead of time, and marked each one with either an uppercase A or a lowercase a. Then I had baby bookworm place each into one of two baskets that were labeled with an uppercase A or lowercase a. We counted the acorns as she went along. We talked about "more" and "less" as well (our uppercase A basket had more than our lowercase a basket).
In addition to this being a math lesson, it snuck in a little phonemic awareness too, which is an important pre-reading skill!
Making Connections: Baby bookworm learned the concept of an acorn one day while we were at a garden that we frequent. When we read Boo To You! I pointed out the acorns to baby bookworm in the pictures and said "remember when we picked up acorns at the garden". She said "yes, like a hat" - referring to a conversion we had had previously about how the top part of the acorn seemed like a hat.
Now when we did this math activity I referred back to both of her previous experiences with acorns. We got out Boo To You! again and I said, "Look, mommy made pretend acorns that we can play a game with".
This activity was a great way to use a word that we had learned before but in a new context.
Subject 3: SCIENCE
Our science "class" consisted of a taste testing and apple "dissection" (by the way, baby bookworm knew the word apple before this lesson, but not in the context of Fall). I bought one granny smith apple and one red apple and cut them up into small bites. We then tasted each one and talked about how they tasted different. I introduced the words "sour" and "sweet" to baby bookworm. We also talked about the different parts of the apple like the skin, stem, and seeds and discussed how apples grow. Then we "dissected" the apple by peeling off the skin and cutting it open to reveal the "star" and seeds (which baby bookworm found fascinating).
Baby bookworm and I also compared apples and arranged them from biggest to smallest, talked about how the biggest apple felt heavier than the smallest apple, and discussed the shape of the apples (which she exclaimed were "round").
This activity is a great ACTIVE way to learn new vocabulary, and has lots of hidden math lessons too. If you want to branch this out as a math activity, you could pair this lesson with the book Apple Countdown (for a summary of it, visit here).
Making Connections: An apple was not a new object to baby bookworm; but here I expanded her understanding of this object. We talked about how apples come from trees and that apple picking is a Fall activity. We got out I Know It's Autumn and discussed the front cover making the connection back to a familiar learning context.
Subject 4: SOCIAL STUDIES
Our social studies lesson wasn't too involved, but a good time nevertheless! All we did was use baby bookworm's map of the US to talk about the different regions of the country and what Fall might feel and look like in that region. In this particular puzzle that we have, the pieces are actually divided up by region (not state), so it paired very nicely with my lesson. We got it pretty cheap too from a Borders bookstore that was going out of business.
Subject 5: RECESS
For "recess" I wanted to get baby bookworm running around to work out some of that energy even on a rainy day (seriously, what is WITH this rain - it's been non stop for days on end). So I made up a leaf pick-up game. What I did was I used some fake leaves that I had gotten at the craft store (for another project, but why not use them twice?) and we pretended to rake them into a pile (just like Arthur does in Arthur Jumps Into Fall). She loved the raking part and even correctly used her newly learned vocabulary while doing this activity.
Then baby bookworm and I had a race to see who could run over to the pile and pick up a leaf first. Recess would have been better outside, but we had a blast anyway. I actually worked up a sweat, and baby bookworm got in some exercise while working on her gross motor skills.
Raking leaves like in Arthur's book
Making connections: We made the obvious connection with this activity back to the book we had read, and it made her want to go read the book again! We also talked about the color of the leaves; we took a peek outside on this dreary day and I pointed out that our leaves were still on the tree and green. I asked her what color Arthur and her leaves were and she told me "oranges" (yes, like the fruit). Then I explained more about the season of Fall and that soon enough our leaves outside would turn colors. I think she's looking forward now to jumping into a real pile of leaves! And when she finally gets her chance, trust me, I will remind her of this very activity.
Subject 6: ART
Art class consisted of a few projects.
Free style painting with apple "stampers" --
making the connection back to our apple tasting
Fall collage made from a Family Circle magazine --
making the connection back to the collage in Boo to You!
Apple mosaic made with contact and tissue paper --
not sure if there was a connection here other than back to
apples being a Fall object
Art is a great way to enhance fine motor skills. For a few other ideas and more information, read this old post.
Subject 7: MUSIC
We learned this song for music. Baby bookworm LOVED it. WARNING: your child will want to watch this no less than 20 times in a row and you will hate me for it.
Making Connections: I connected this song back to Boo to You! where there is a page of jack-o-lanterns (pumpkins). I actually think I may also do an art project with baby bookworm based on this song.
Subject 8: THEATER
For our "theater" class we played house. I had baby bookworm put on her apron and we pretended to cook a Fall harvest meal (like in Boo to You!) on her play kitchen. We pretended to make corn on the cob, a turkey, and apple pie!
Cooking
Carving the turkey
Enjoying the feast!
AFTER SCHOOL ACTIVITY
For our after school activity we played dress up, which baby bookworm LOVES to do. She was SO proud of herself in her cheerleading outfit! We tossed around a stuffed football for added fun!
Supporting both Mommy and Daddy's favorite teams
Pretend play is a fantastic way to build language skills, so you might want to get those Halloween costumes out a little early. To learn more about the benefits of pretend play, click here. Playing ball is a great way to foster the development of gross motor skills.
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So what is the Ed Psych 101 "back to school" lesson for YOU?
Happy back to school everyone! And happy learning!
