If you’ve got the leaves to prove it’s fall, here are some activities to get your homeschool students interested in. The range is wide and you can always add or adapt them to suit the needs of your homeschool family better.
Pick Apples and Make Pie
A number of orchards have sales with the plentiful bounty. You can take a field trip with the homeschool students to one and personally pick up the apples that will be needed for pie making off the trees. It can also be considered an educational trip and added to the homeschool schedule.
Baking is a great way to use mathematics and baking apple pies also ensures a healthy and tasty treat at the end of the lesson. Have a simple recipe printed out and ready for the young homeschool students to follow. They can even decorate them once they have finished baking the pies.
The Tree Study
Now’s a good time to get in to the biology lesson on plants and trees. Showing the clear effect of the weather on the leaves is a great way to study the changes that plants undergo. You can study a single tree near the house, or take a trip to the park and get in a number of different tree leaves for the collection.
Leaves can be stuck in a herbarium with information about the tree accompanying them. Also if the children are old enough, the homeschool students can be tasked with finding out the most effective way to preserve the leaves. They can experiment with glycerin preservation and silica preservation techniques.
Leaf Art
With so many leaves available for the taking, it may be a good time to use them as raw material for art projects. Leaves can be pasted together to make roses. They can be dried and used as decorations. Cards can be made with leaf designs. Leaves can be stitched together to make costumes. It is even possible to make bowls, plates and eating utensils from sturdier leaves by layering them together. The possibilities are endless. Just have fun playing and learning with them.
