Leaves glorious Leaves

Autumn is here

Little man painting leaves 

We had a fab autumn themed after school arts and crafts session. I find the gap between coming home from school and making tea a great time to get the paints out and a great way to keep the kids occupied while I am cooking lunch. On our way home from school we collected lots of leaves to paint and print. 

I sat down with the children for 20 minutes and we talked about autumn and autumn colours while we mixed colours and made some lovely leaf prints.

It is really easy to get wrapped up in a busy lifestyle there are always a million things that need to be done and we forget to get involved with small activities like this. We tend to set the paints up and let the children get on with it but spending ten minutes getting involved in an activity each day is something we can all fit into our schedule and is more beneficial than we realise. Let the child lead the activity, don't give demands or ask too many questions. It is important to be attentive and give lots of praise. It makes children feel like your interested in what they are doing and builds their confidence and self esteem.

Macey found a pine cone in the crafts box and wanted to find out what print it would make. 

"Oh it looks like rain" 

Googly Leaf People

Oh we had lots of fun with this activity. There is nothing better than playing with gloopy glue and googly eyes.   The best thing is it is soo simple and can be fit into busy routines. We collected the leaves on our way back from school and then got stuck in making our little leaf people whilst waiting for tea to cook. The children found the leaf people highly amusing and were smiling and giggling and really enthusiastic and proud of there pictures.