Autumn leaves
This autumn, leaves are falling from trees and blowing all over the place. Some of them are quite beautiful, and many of them have different shapes. Maybe some of them are blowing into your yard.
As they fall down and blow near your house, see how many you can identify. Collect one of each different type of leaf you can find. Learn about the kind of trees the leaves came from – maple, cottonwood, mulberry, elm, apple, aspen, and so many more.
If there are too many different kinds of leaves for you to learn about, choose a few with interesting shapes or colors that intrigue you. See what you can find out about them. Ask members of your family, trusted neighbors, or search the Internet to learn more.
You might find out some really cool things about leaves from different types of trees. For example, I learned something interesting from one of my neighbors who has a mulberry tree in her yard. Leaves usually take several days or weeks to completely fall from a tree, but the mulberry tree is different. When it gets ready to lose its leaves, they all fall at the same time.
If you decide to make a project of studying leaves, maybe you could ask your teacher to give you extra credit for it. You could write a report or give a talk in class, either in person or on the computer if you are in a remote learning situation.
You could mount each different leaf on a piece of heavy paper and write the name of the tree it came from on the paper. Then you could hold it up for the class to see and tell everyone what you found out about the tree that leaf came from. You could talk about how that leaf is different than leaves from other trees. You might have several different papers with several different leaves mounted on them to talk about.
Who knows? You could become the neighborhood expert on different kinds of trees and what their leaves look like. Other kids might ask you about the leaves they’ve found. You might even meet some cool new friends who like leaves too.
If you enjoy making crafts, you could make a wreathe out of leaves that you collect. Use some glue to paste them on a piece of cardboard in a circle. Keep adding leaves until you have a thick circle of leaves. Then you could hang it up somewhere in your house to give your home a pretty autumn piece of art.
You can probably think of lots of other things to do with leaves. I wonder how many different ideas you could come up with.