Leaves and Trees

This morning in flowers class we saw lots of newspaper on the table along with a big green spray water bottle and some autumn colored dyes. We had the big newspaper trees that we made yesterday and using the spray bottle we sprayed the branches and leaves on the trees with water. Then using paint droppers we dropped the dye onto the branches and watched it spread. The colors were really nice and soaked in really well. On the next table the felt picture making activity was also very popular with us. This uses a felt background and lots of printed felt pieces. We could make lots of different pictures with these. On the main carpet area Kosei and Eito used the large alphabet cards and the wooden shapes to make their names. They used the 4 styles of wooden pieces; a big line, a small line, a big curve and a small curve to make their names using only capital letters. They looked so proud that they had finished their names and did a great job. Before going to the park Nanako read to us all a great book titled ’16 run away pumpkins’. This is a very funny book and we all enjoyed it. In the park we collected lots of colored leaves for our autumn colored artwork. We looked really carefully and found lots of green, yellow and brown leaves but no red ones unfortunately. When we came back to the classroom we divided into 2 groups so that we could use the leaves in our artwork on one table while the second group could make leaves from circular origami paper. To make the paper leaves we firstly had to fold the paper in half and then fold it concertina style to make the veins on the leaves. We could then decide if we wanted a straight edge to the leaf blade or a serrated edge. If we wanted a serrated edge to the leaf we used some wavy edged scissors to cut the edges. Once we had finished our paper folding and cutting we glued them onto our large artwork. We also used the leaves we collected form the park as well as some nylon cloth autumn colored leaves. These nylon leaves we needed to glue on firstly and push them flat. Once they were in place we could then use some watered down glue to hold them firmly to the paper background. Next week we will put them all together to make one giant display for the classroom. Have a great weekend. All our love, Darren, Ayaka and Nanako