Our Autumn Walk Our Context for Learning is ‘Why do Leaves go crispy?’ and to start our topic we read ‘Leaf Man’ by Lois Elhert. The children decided it would be fun to make their own leaf men and so went on an ‘Autumn Walk’ to collect different shaped, sized and coloured leaves. Everyone looked carefully for different colours, shapes and sizes. William remembered the name for ‘fern leaves’ and collected some in his bag. The children enjoyed taking a closer look at a mole hill they had discovered and wondered how many moles might live under the playing field. The children were excited to go back to school to make their characters! W/C 5 th October Engage. It was a typical Autumn day; a little windy and grey sky but the children put on their coats and walked safely around to the playing fields. The children had a bag to fill with different leaves that they could use to create their own leaf characters.

‘A Leaf Man has got to go where the wind blows!’ LO: To use a range of materials to create a collage. After our Autumn Walk we were ready to start creating our own leaf characters. Before we started creating, we enjoyed talking about our own experiences of Autumn. Emilie explained “when it’s windy and raining, the leaves fall off the trees and they are green and yellow and brown”. Charlie talked about his own ‘nature’ walk he had been on with his family and found “acorns, sticks, fir cones and leaves”. The children decided on their own character they would like to create. Isabelle created a ‘Leaf Lady’ and could talk about the different colour leaves she had used. Jana created a ‘Leaf Butterfly’ using different leaves to create wings and Macey even made a ‘ Leaf Dog’! The children made sure that they thought carefully about the size of the leaves they wanted to use and made sure that they placed the leaves just where they felt they looked best. They even used scissors to cut leaves to the right size and a hole punch to create eyes. All of the leaf characters look wonderful on our classroom window especially when the sun shines through them! W/C 5 th October 2015.

Autumn Counting! LO: Count reliable 10 / 20 objects an read numbers to at least 10 / 20. W/C 5 th October The children were really excited to see lots of different Autumn materials in the basket. There were red leaves, yellow leaves, maple seeds, pebbles, pine cones and acorns to choose from. The children were challenged to read the number cards, order the numbers and then match the right amount of chosen Autumn objects to that number. Isobel made sure that she touched each object and said the number at the same time. Mia lost count but went back to the beginning to check she had the right amount. Macey counted too many and so with a little help, she put back the ones she didn’t need. Some children noticed that it is easier to count lots of objects when they are sorted into a line.