There are a ton of fabulous fall tree activities out there, but I’ve really been striving to be somewhat original in my activities. All of my ideas are of course spurred from something I’ve seen online, and in no way am I saying I’m the first to ever do these this exact way… because I’m sure I’m not. But here are three activities we’ve done in the past couple weeks to create fall trees different ways, modifying someone else’s ideas.
I’m loving contact paper activities. I saw this post from Allison over at No Time for Flashcards, and it really got me thinking. One of the fine motor activities I haven’t really done with Becca is paper tearing. So, I gathered three sheets of construction paper – one each of red, yellow, and orange, and I did something I’m horrible at… I drew a tree on contact paper. (Draw it on the non-sticky side.) Then, I got out my painter’s tape and taped it – sticky side out – to one of our back door windows. And I taught Becca how to tear paper! We had a blast tearing our paper leaves, and sticking them on the tree. And, I left the paper where she could access it throughout the past couple weeks, and she has added more leaves as time has gone by. Despite my disdain for my drawing abilities, she immediately knew it was a tree, and has been very proud of her fall tree! So, I count this one as a success!
I love buttons. Like seriously LOVE buttons. As a kid, I loved going over to my Grandma’s house, pulling out her button drawer, and playing with all the buttons – sorting them, stacking them, whatever. Just digging my hands into them. I guess it was my very own “sensory bin” back before that was even a term. HA! The cool thing is that I now have a button box – that includes all of Grandma’s buttons, all of Cody’s Mima’s buttons from her sewing table, and quite a few new buttons that I’ve added myself. It’s an awesome resource, and a ton of fun! So I saw this post from Maggy at Red Ted Art, and it got me thinking – I could create a button tree with Becca that was specifically fall! So, I found a tree clipart online (after having learned my lesson on the contact paper tree… Mommy can do lots of things, but drawing just ain’t one of them!), and printed it on some beautiful textured blue card stock. (Want your own tree? Get the free printable here! I simply typed “winter tree clipart” in Google and found this tree from ClipartBest.com and made it fit like I wanted on my document… I’m saving you the work!) And after the tree was printed, we sifted through the button box, found some fabulous buttons, and then set to work. Becca placed each button where she wanted it, and I used the hot glue gun to stick them down. We had some serious fun making this tree, and I think it turned out simply beautiful. She is so proud of her button tree!
I knew I was going to do this post, so I stretched myself, and said, ok what’s at least one more way I can do a fall tree? I had to dig deep for this one. But, I used what we had laying around – tops to Becca’s favorite applesauce pouches (thank you, HEB!) and decided to work on her random number matching skills. The girl can count – like mad. But sometimes just seeing a number (beyond ten), recognizing it, and then being able to match it to itself out of order… well, that’s still a little rusty. So here’s what I did. I drew on a large sheet of construction paper (again, apology for my lack of drawing skills, but she knew it was a tree, so who cares?) a tree, and then traced around a pouch cap to be sure my circles were the right size. I covered the whole sheet in contact paper since laminating and using twenty mins later wasn’t an option… Then I labeled each pouch cap with a number, and colored the circles on the tree random colors… and labeled them with numbers as well. It helps a little because they aren’t all one color, so she knows that the orange ones on the paper will be from the peach applesauce pouches, and the red ones on the paper will be from the plain applesauce pouches – so it helps her check the numbers and make sure she’s on the right track. She keeps going back to this activity and pulling out new numbers. I’ve found that she likes to start the activity in the morning before we go anywhere – she’ll place one or two pouch caps – and then later in the day she’ll place three or four more, come back later and place a couple more… she just doesn’t have the energy or patience to do all twenty of them at one time. Which is fine with me. I plan to stick these pouch caps in a bag, and pull this back out next fall – when she should be able to do all of them in one setting.
Butterbees and Bumbleflies 
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