Falling Leaves Storytime

"Falling Leaves" was the theme for Sunday's Storytime. I believe I've mentioned before that this is my favorite time of the year, so I will do every fall-time theme imaginable before the kids start to tire of it. "Squirrels", "Apple Pie", "Falling Leaves", and this coming Sunday I'm 98% certain I'll be reading about "Pumpkins". Mmmm... I think I see a pumpkin treat in this storytime's future. Oh the fun to be had!

The line-up included:

Mouse's First Fall by Lauren Thompson and Illustrated by Bucket Erdogan

Song: "The Leaves on the Trees Are Falling Down"by Irmagard Guertges

(To the tune of "The Wheels on the Bus")

The leaves of the trees turn orange and red

orange and red, orange and red.

The leaves of the trees turn orange and red

All through the town.

The leaves of the trees come tumbling down,

tumbling down, tumbling down.

The leaves of the trees come tumbling down,

All through the town.

The leaves on the ground go swish, swish, swish

Swish, swish, swish, swish, swish, swish

The leaves on the ground go swish, swish, swish

All through the town.

Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert

Poem: "All The Bright Colors" from the book Under the Sun and the Moon by Margaret Wise Brown

Leaves by David Ezra Stein

By the Light of the Harvest Moon by Harriet Ziefert and Illustrated by Mark Jones

The craft:

The autumn tree craft for Sunday's Storytime was inspired by Full Circle, with one alteration; I didn't use ink simply because we didn't have any, AND it has the potential to make a huge mess in the library.

Instead, pre-storytime I painted a tree with washable black paint and photocopied it into multiple copies once dry.

Once I had a nice tree silhouette for the kiddos to work with,  I crinkled leaves I had found outside into smallish pieces and placed the "miniature leaves" into bowls.

Then when storytime came around, I set out the tree silhouettes, crumpled leaves, and liquid school glue. I instructed the kids to dab glue where they would like leaves to be on their tree, sprinkle the crumbled leaves as if you would sprinkle glitter over glue, and then press the leaves down. After a minute, we would give our trees a light shake and the leaves that were not attached by glue would fall from the tree, while the attached would remain.

Image Sources: Mouse's First Fall, Leaf Man, Leaves, Harvest Moon