Once Upon A Book ~ Leaf Man

 

Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert 

Book Summary ~ With a body made of fallen leaves and acorns for eyes, Leaf Man takes off from a backyard and flutters away on the breeze, meandering past animals, over fields of fall vegetables, above waterways, and across prairie meadows. From ducks to pumpkins to fish, all of the objects described are fashioned out of life-size leaves of various shapes, sizes, and colors.

Bible Verse

We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. (Isaiah 64:6)

Nature Walk

Before doing anything, we took a walk around our neighborhood and looked at the colors starting to peek through. Even though it is still a few weeks away from the perfect time for our area, we found some trees that had some fall color starting. While we were walking, Jonah gathered leaves in a ziploc bag to take home and use for some of our activities.

Art

The most obvious art activity was to make our own "Leaf Man" pictures. Jonah wanted to use a leaf for the body and add body features with his crayons similar to the pictures in Fall Leaves Fall, another book we had read during the week. We made a family portrait, a fish scene, a butterfly, etc. We spent lots of time coming up with pictures! Jonah told me that this was his favorite activity out of all that we did. He thought the leaf pictures we made were hilarious.

 

Leaf Sort & Patterns

I used a leaf punch from my scrapbooking supplies to punch out leaves from red, orange, yellow, and brown paper. Jonah sorted them by color and then used them to make patterns. Jonah glued the patterns on paper.

Leaf Counting

I divided a piece of paper into 6 squares and wrote numbers in each box. Jonah used some of the leaf punches to count each number. He glued them all by himself. When he was finished with the first set of numbers he asked for another number page with "big numbers." I quickly obliged!

L is for Leaf

I wrote "L is for Leaf" on a piece of paper and Jonah glued leaves on the letter L.

 

L Highlighter Tracing

I took a highlighter and quickly wrote some rows of the capital L for Jonah to trace. Using a highlighter saved me time printing out a tracing page and printer ink. It's one of my favorite quick tips for tracing practice.

Song

(sung to the tune of "The Farmer in the Dell")
The leaves are falling down,
The leaves are falling down,
Red, yellow, orange, and brown,
The leaves are falling down.