Leaf Color Match Walk

Our Quick Pick and Project of the Week involved another nature walk. Nature walks have really been a great activity for us this fall as it involves all of us, being outside, and enjoying a place we're so lucky to live in. 

Leaf Color Match Walk

For this walk I wanted to link it to the approaching season and the leaves which are beginning to change.   

When I was at the hardware store a few weeks ago getting paint for my new classroom shelves I was reminded of this fun Outdoor Color Match post I had seen at Inner Child Fun a while back. I was inspired to pick up a bunch of autumn colored samples. 

To get ready for our walk I choose some of the samples which I thought we might find out in the woods. I punched one corner with a leaf shaped hole punch and the opposite corner with a regular hole punch. Using the regular hole, I put all the samples onto a binder ring. I had gone a little over board with collecting samples so I was able to make a larger, more varied set for Big Brother and a simpler set for Little Brother. (I didn't really expect him to use it, but I'm quickly learning he needs to have the same thing in his hand as his Big Brother.) 

Before heading out we read the book Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf by Lois Ehlert. The story tells of the life of a tree and describes what the leaves look like in the fall. We also quickly looked through Autumn Leaves by Ken Robbins which uses real photographs to capture what specific tree leaves look like in the fall. 

Afterwards we went out into the yard and the woods behind our house. Big Brother used his color ring to look at the different leaves he found on the trees and ground. 

He would hold the leaf hole in each sample over the leaf to compare and then decide if it was a match. It allowed us to start talking about different shades of colors. 

Near the end of the walk he started collecting leaves to bring home so he could do more comparing back at the house. 

A fun and easy way to explore the wide variety of leaf colors in the fall!