With so many celebrations happening at this time of year, the children had the option of making leaf garlands.

We made our own needles using small sticks and attached wool, learning how to tie a cow hitch knot. Then we chose leaves to thread onto our wool, which generated wonderful opportunities for learning about the trees in our woodland as we studied the leaves we chose.

Inspired by the beautifully illustrated story of Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert, some children went off to create their own leaf art. Here are a few of the creations...

''A cat and it's funny because it has a square head"

"A leaf friend, these acer the legs arms and head. I think I will add wings, then it can fly and make friends in the woods."

"A magical unicorn."

This activity offered up the opportunity to talk to the children about the leaves they had chosen; to notice their shape and size and look at the surrounding trees to see where they might come from.

Noticing the different colours of the leaves we were able to relate this to changes that happen in Autumn and talk about why leaves change colour.

Did you know: During Autumn and Winter, there is not enough sunlight for leaves to make their food and trees will live off the food they stored in the Summer. As the green colour (chlorophyll) disappears from the leaves, we see all the different colours, like orange and yellow. These colours have been there all along, but we only see them when the green fades. The brown we see in leaves comes from waste that is left in the leaves.

One child made a picture frame around their leaf art and this led to some wonderful knot work as we worked together to create picture frames from sticks, using square lashing...

We rounded off the session with a game of 'Otters and beavers', with much hilarity and excitement!

Today at the woods we created dens and worked as a team.