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Creative activities for the children in your child care center should foster creative development. Creative activities should promote expression, encourage spontaneity in material usage, and introduce children to textured materials.

A leaf mural is a creative activity that supports creative development and teaches children in child day care centers about seasons. Begin by introducing the children to the concepts of autumn/fall. Read age appropriate board books and picture books that feature the season fall. Take the children on a nature walk. Discuss the signs and symbols of autumn. Let the children collect fall items like leaves, acorns and pine cones. Discuss the colors, textures, smells.  Bring them back to the class and sort all of the items. You may save these items for other fall crafts.

Fall Mural Materials

• Large and small leaf patterns (several for each child)
• Construction paper
• A variety of tempura paint in fall colors (gold, brown, orange, and red)  in shallow dishes
• Painting sponges
• Coarse salt
• Bulletin board letters which spell “It’s Autumn” Or “Welcome to Fall”
• Bulletin board

Activity Preparation

• Cut out leaf patterns
• Cover the craft table in butcher paper
• Distribute leaf cutouts and stamps
• Put paint in shallow dishes
• Add salt to the paint and mix well

Activity Procedures
Invite the children over to the craft table.  Let them know they will be creating a leaf mural. Demonstrate how to dip the sponges in the paint and sponge paint the leaves. Let the sponge paint their leaf cutouts. Arrange the leaves randomly on the bulletin board. Add the bulletin board title of your choice.

Autumn Leaf Mural Lesson Objectives

Objective 1
To provide the opportunity for expressive activities through by allowing children to create designs on leaves using a sponge.
Verbal Cue A: Today we are going to color the leaves!
Verbal Cue B: I have lots of colors for you to use the leaves to make a design.

Objective 2
To encourage spontaneity in material usage by allowing the children to choose colors and to mix the colors they choose
Verbal Cue A: Which colors would you like to use first?
Verbal Cue B: I like the way you have chosen your colors!

Objective 3
To introduce textured materials by adding coarse salt to the paint to be used by the children.
Verbal Cue A: Would you like to add salt to the paint?
Verbal Cue B: Let’s see what it looks and feels like after we add salt to the paint.

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Fall is in full swing! The leaves are changing colors and falling and the air is nice and brisk.  As many child daycare centers begin to implement fall themed activities, consider this pumpkin sorting activity. Pumpkin sorting is a fun autumn-themed activity that supports cognitive development.

Cognitive Development in Preschoolers

Cognitive development focuses on developing functions of the brain such as thinking, learning, awareness, judgment, and processing information. According to developmental psychologist Jean Piaget, children go through several stages of cognitive development and learning activities for toddlers and children should correspond to the appropriate developmental stage.

Pumpkin sorting is a cognitive activity for preschoolers that helps them learn and practice the skills of classification, relationships, and counting. This lesson plan includes preparation instructions, procedures, and materials list for this activity. The lesson plan also includes age-appropriate learning objectives and examples of the simple supporting verbal cues necessary to encourage participation and support learning in child care centers.

Activity Materials

• Large Felt Board
• Orange Felt
• Pumpkin templates (optional)
• Scissors

Activity Preparation

Trace pumpkins in various sizes (some large and some small) on a large piece of orange felt. You may also use pumpkin templates to trace the pumpkins on the felt. Cut the pumpkins out the felt. Arrange them randomly on a large felt board.

Procedure

Invite the children over to the felt board. Explain to them that they will be sorting pumpkins and arranging them biggest to smallest. Encourage the children to place the pumpkin cut outs in graduated order from biggest to smallest. After they are arranged encourage the children to sort into two categories, placing big pumpkins on one side of the board and small pumpkins on the other. Next ask them to count the number of pumpkins in each group.

Objective 1: To develop an understanding of classification by encourage children to sort pumpkins by size

• Verbal Cue A: Can you sort the pumpkins into big and small?
• Verbal Cue B: Let’s put the big large pumpkins on this side of the board and the small pumpkins on the other side.

Objective 2: To teach about relationships using the terms small, big, and bigger

• Verbal cue A: Let’s arrange all of the pumpkins in order from big to small.
• Verbal Cue B: Which pumpkin is bigger? This pumpkin or this pumpkin?

Objective 3: To introduce the number concept of 1-10

• Verbal Cue A: Let’s count the number of small pumpkins
• Verbal Cue B: How many large pumpkins are there?

By participating in this pumpkin sorting activity, young children will learn important cognitive skills such as sorting and classification, spend time becoming familiar with the symbols of autumn, and have great fun.

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