Coffee filter leaves

These gorgeous leaves are super easy to make and make lovely homemade fall/ autumn decorations.  

First draw a leaf on a coffee filter paper

Then colour the leaf. We used autumnal (fall) colours to fit in with the season but you could use what ever colour you like.

The Fairy colouring.

The Frog colouring.

Next you spray (we used a well cleaned out bottle to hold the water). Using the spray is great for encouraging motor control in little hands. It helps if the leaf is on backing paper at this point as the link spreads(not kitchen roll as that will absorb all the colour).

The Fairy observed the leaf looked more like a leaf (and less like a blob of colour!) if she used less water.

The Fairy was fascinated to watch the colours blend and merge.

This activity was great fun as well as being a great learning opportunity. Not only could both the children (aged 2 and 5 years) do something together at the same time, they were developing fine motor control and making observations.

Language Links: wet, dry, spread, colours (red, yellow orange brown), autumn (fall)

Autumn {Fall} Discovery bottle

I adore conkers, I love how they feel and how shiny they are when they first pop out of their case. So when we were in the park the other weekend I picked some up and put them in my pocket. The Fairy loves to play with them too. I do get a bit nervous about The Frog playing with them as they are 'choking size'.

As I was thinking about how he could play with them when I remember his love of discovery bottles- an Autumn (or Fall) bottle seemed a perfect solution. If you've not come across these before they are basically bottles with things in to discover! Older children can observe it and predict, younger ones can use it in a similar way to a rattle (or eat it). You can put anything that takes your fancy in them, the first one I eve made was for the Fairy when she was little (10 months)- its got glitter and coloured water in and still gets used today (and she's 4!). The Frog has one he adores with plastic beads (think he likes to make noise to compete with his big sis' chatting). I seal the top with a hot glue gun just to make sure it isn't going to get opened (I also make sure they are not played with unsupervised just in case they do).

To our base of conkers I added a small leaf, a fir cone and a cork (I know that's not strictly autumnal but it's a good colour and we had it in the kitchen).

As you can see from the photos The Frog loves waving it around. The Fairy likes to borrow it too.

Autumn fingerprint tree

On the way home from pre school, The Fairy asked 'Can we paint something with autumn leaves on Mummy?' My first thought was to do some leaf printing, but we've had so much rain the leaves here are soggy, sludgy heaps not crisp, crunchy, printable leaves.

Turns out, The Fairy had other ideas anyway ('No we should do one like our pink flower tree'). Perfect I thought, The Frog can join in too - he loves a spot of finger painting (well banging his hands on the table covered in paint!). Unfortunately the Frog decided to have a mega nap so he missed out on the painting action, but here's what my big girl and I got up to...

Mixing paint. We used poster paint (here's an affiliate link in blue to some paint just in case you want to buy some more - if you choose to buy the paint we get a small commission at no extra cost to you).

Leaves

The owl was a spontaneous hand print (with some added paper and pen extras!)

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