Littles Learning Link Up: The Four Seasons Plus a Autumn Leaf Tree

Each month you will find:

• A seasonal round-up (usually toward the beginning of the month)
• Posts where I share what I have been up to with my elementary-age children and the preschoolers I work with at our homeschool co-op (including occasional highlight posts where I share how we used ideas that have been linked up here on Littles Learning Link Up).

Each week, I will host a link up, where you can share either what you have been up to recently, or old posts that may go with the theme.  Feel free to link up more than one post.

Each week I will continue to feature a couple of posts from those that have been linked up. 

I hope you will continue to share your wonderful posts, and I hope you will find something new to try with your child(ren).

It would be great for everyone to stop by and visit the other linked-up posts as well. Check them out, leave some comments, pin those that interest you. Let's make this a real party and socialize with each other.

Here's a peek at what we have been up to in our homeschool.

Last week was our week off of school. We school 5 or 6 weeks on, 1 week off. Of course, we still had co-op. I wanted to do a fall unit, which looks like it will be more of a fall/autumn lesson. This year we are going to take the pre-k/k class on a couple of field trips. Next week we are heading to the fire station. When we get back to the camp, I plan on reading a book or two about fire safety/fire trucks and then we will do a craft based on that. And the following week, we are headed on a longer field trip which will take the full time of co-op. That brings us into November for the next meeting, so I will probably switch to a Thanksgiving theme for the few weeks we have left. 

Time to share last week's lesson/crafts. 

We started out by singing some songs about the four seasons and talking about them. I even brought a globe and a flashlight to demonstrate not just the earth traveling around the sun, but the earth spinning, giving us day and night. 

Then we made "Four Seasons Tree" Books

For this project you will need:

cardstock (1 full sheet and 3 half sheets per child)

green construction paper

acrylic paint (pink (or red and white like I used), green, red, yellow, and orange)

brown crayon

glue sticks

stapler

The only thing I needed to do to get this prepared was draw a trunk onto the bottom of the full sheet of cardstock, draw branches on two of the half sheets, and cut out the green leaves for the summer tree. 

We focused on one season at a time. 

First was spring. The children just needed to make fingerprint buds and blossoms.

We did the green for the buds first.

Then added pink for the blossoms.

We set those aside to dry and worked on the summer leaves. This was simple. They just needed to glue the green leaves to the bottom of the half page of card stock. Older children could cut out their own leaves.

We then moved on to the fall/autumn tree.

We used q-tip bundles (a bunch of q-tips bundled together with a rubber band) to dab on fall colors. I put the red, yellow, and orange close together on the egg carton so they could get them all at the same time without mixing them together, so we could see all the colors.

Finally, for the winter tree, I had the children add branches with the brown crayon above the trunk on the full sheet of cardstock.

Here's a look at all of the parts together.

Then the books were put together. I stapled the tops so we could flip them while having the trunk stay the same.

Here's spring.

Then just flip the top to summer, which it appears I did not get a picture of.

Then flip to fall.

And winter

We set them aside to let them dry while the children went to snack and gym.

When they came back, we made Autumn Leaf Trees

For this craft all you need is:

brown construction paper

green construction paper

fall leaves

glue sticks

white glue

I prepped by cutting out the trunks and green leaf section of the tree. Again, older children could cut these by themselves. Honestly, when my children were this age, they would have been cutting these out by themselves, but in this group I have a range of ages, so I decided it would be simpler and quicker to have the parts ready beforehand. 

We started out by using the glue stick to attach the leaves to the trunk. Then we put lots of white glue all over the leaves so the children could change the green leaves to colorful autumn leaves.

It was a simple craft, but I really liked the results.

We sang a couple of autumn songs and then we played a couple of games.

I had them use straws to blow a leaf across the table. They were supposed to see how far they could get it with one good blow.

They they raced in pairs across the floor, seeing who could blow their leaf to the finish line first.

Here's the words to the songs we sang.

I came up with the words myself.

First, the songs we sang at the beginning when we focused on the four seasons:

There Are Four Seasons

(to the tune of there are seven days)

There are four seasons

There are four seasons

There are four seasons

in a year

There are four seasons

There are four seasons

There are four seasons

in a year

First there’s spring and then there’s summer, then there’s fall and winter too

First there’s spring and then there’s summer, then there’s fall and winter too.

There are Four Seasons

(to the tune of Frere Jacque)

There are four seasons, there are four seasons

In a year, in a year

The seasons are a changing, the seasons are a changing

As we go, round the sun.

Spring turns to summer, summer turns to autumn

Seasons change, seasons change

Autumn turns to winter, winter turns to spring time

seasons change, seasons change

Then we sang the autumn songs we sang last fall.

Leaves are Falling

(To the tune of Running over)

Leaves are falling leaves are falling

Trees are bright and leaves are falling

Leaf piles we’ll make, we will rake and rake

When trees are bright and leaves are falling

Autumn Leaves

(To the tune of London Bridge)

Autumn leaves are falling down, falling down, falling down,

Autumn leaves are falling down

Lots of colors

Autumn leaves are falling down, falling down, falling down,

Red, and orange, yellow and brown

I love Autumn

We read three books. 

The first two focused more on the different seasons. 

Rainy, Sunny, Blowy, Snowy What are Seasons? by Jane Brocket.

Leaves by David Ezra Stein

The third one focused on fall.

It's Fall by Linda Glaser.

Let's take a look at that review schedule real quick:

Last week I posted three reviews. Phew.  I posted reviews for the two newest books in the Secret of the Hidden Scrolls series from WorthyKids Books, plus Fun Family Chess and Wooden Building Planks from Brain Blox.

This week I have another three reviews to post. You will find reviews for Smartick math subscription, the Drawing Program from Creating a Masterpiece, and Excelerate Spanish. Next week I will share my review of a multiplication practice book from Channie's Visual Handwriting & Math Workbooks.
And then in November you will find reviews for new books from Kregel Publications, plus books from Mattie Richardson,  Elephant Learning Math Academy, and LitWits Kits.

Here are some things I would like to share with you:

Focusing on Fire Safety Round Up

Fall Leaves All Around Round Up

Pumpkin Fun Round Up

I'm not sure when I am going to get to that ocean themed round up. Sorry about that. I've been awfully busy with my new venture, being a Pampered Chef consultant.

Now onto:

Littles Learning Link Up Features

On my last Littles Learning Link Up post, there was only 1 wonderful post linked up. 

Please, don't forget to stop by other posts that are linked up. See what catches your eye, stop by, pin the post to a relevant board, and perhaps leave a comment to let the author of the blog know you have been by for a visit. I know I appreciate others commenting and letting me know they have read my posts, so I am sure others do too.

Here's this week's featured post is:

Hilbert's Mazes shared Hand Drawn Pumpkin Farm Maze - Free Printable PDF.

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Join the Party!

I would love to have you join in this week! What sort of activities do you do with your young children? Do you have some favorite activities you would like to share? I invite you to link up below. I will be pinning posts on one of my relevant boards, and I would love to feature some of the activities each week from what is linked up.

Please know I may share a picture from your post and link back to it, along with sharing how we used your idea in our school time. By linking up you are giving me permission to use a picture from your post. I will ALWAYS give credit and link back. Additionally, if you choose to try out any of the ideas with your child, please make sure you give credit where credit is due.

Linky will be open through Monday night, to give me time to check out all the posts and get the Features organized. Please take the time to visit some of the other wonderful posts linked up.

No button currently, and there won't be one until I can figure it out seeing as Photobucket has changed things. Feel free to still share the picture in place of the button. Just link it to my Littles Learning Link Up permalink please.

I am sharing over at

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Tot and Preschool Time with the letter P

We started our P: Penguin unit with My Father's World this past week. I love the letter P because there is so much to do.

The children started out by coloring their P pictures. Harold prefers to glue, so I allowed him to make a Pink and Purple collage on his paper.

Hannah has been working on her cutting skills and cuts out her pictures to make a letter book for each letter/sound.

We will finish the book this coming week.

It has been a while since the children have done any Montessori-type activities. I decided this would be the perfect time to bring a couple out because we could use Pom-poms for spooning and sorting.

Hannah started out with spooning some multi-colored pom-poms.

I then realized that using only the black and white pom-poms would be fun because they could represent the colors of the penguins we were learning about.

Harold does very well with spooning. Except, he did try to eat them after using it properly for a few minutes.

Hannah also worked on some color sorting.

We had a Letter P muffin tin.

As we were cleaning out our pumpkins and getting ready to carve them the girls were having fun trying to put the correct tops on the pumpkins. We decided to make a game out of it. I arranged the pumpkins in a semi-circle with the tops randomly set out in front of them. I then timed the girls to see how long it took them to put the tops on the correct pumpkins. 

Lately Harold wants to do everything the girls are doing. He had a blast playing with the lids.

Oh, the lids make great hats too according to Harold.

This week at co-op we made pumpkin patches. I had done this with Tabitha when she was a young toddler, before I started my blog. I had them draw squiggly lines on green paper to represent the vines. Then they glued on 10 pumpkins. 

We finished them off by counting and writing the numbers 1-10.

Here is Hannah's pumpkin patch.

And this is Harold's pumpkin patch.

For a penguin craft I thought it would be fun for the younger two to make shape penguins. Tabitha and Amelia also wanted to make one. 

Our penguins have black oval bodies, white circle bellies, circle eyes, orange triangle beaks, star feet (and we added rectangle wings after Tabitha realized they looked funny without wings).

I asked Harold to show me his penguin so I could get a picture. This is how he showed it to me, he pointed at it. 

We talked about where penguins live. I found two great interactive maps. This first one shows a map of the world and the red highlighted areas are where penguins live. When you click on an area information comes up about the kind of penguin that lives there. With this second map when you move your cursor over the name of each kind of penguin it will show you a picture of the penguin and move it down to where the penguin lives. Though there are some penguins that live in other places, the MFW unit focuses on Emperor penguins so we talked about them living in Antarctica. We watched some videos showing the male penguins huddled up in the winter keeping warm against the wind and snow. This site has some great videos and pictures, of lots of different animals. Then we decided our penguins should experience a snow storm. 

We used our air pop popcorn popper without its lid so the popcorn could fly all over. We did this a year ago when we were on Day 2 of the creation unit.

Then we painted our penguins a little snowy habitat.

We read some great informative books on penguins.

Emperor Penguins Up Close: Zoom in on Animals by Carmen Bredeson

This girls and I took turns reading the information on each page. Each double page spread focuses on one feature of the Emperor penguin, showing a close up picture as well. 

The Emperor's Egg by Martin Jenkins

This tells the story of the Emperor Penguin's egg from when the mom leaves it with the dad through the mom returning so dad can go off and eat. I love the way it involves the reader by asking questions, and there are additional details in italics at the bottom of some pages.

The Little Penguin by A.J. Wood

This is a cute story of a newly hatched little Emperor penguin who wants to look like his father. He gets lost as they are traveling to the sea and discovers his feathers are falling out. When he meets back up with his family he goes swimming and finds that he has lost his baby feathers and looks like his dad. Though it is a cute story it wasn't very factual when compared to the other books we have read. Still, the children enjoyed it.

Penguin Chick by Betty Tatham

(a Let's Read and Find Out Science book)

This book was quite informative. Though we were reading some repetitive information, we were also introduced to some new vocabulary that the other books hadn't used, like brood pouch and tobogganing. 

We have many other penguin books we are going to be reading as we finish up our P:Penguin unit. I will be sharing them next time. 

I am linking to:

And a couple of new linkies:

The Sunday Showcase Party at Under the Table and Dreaming

Monday Funday at C.R.A.F.T

Masterpiece Monday at Boogieboard Cottage

Saturday Show & Tell at Cheerios and Lattes

Sharing Saturday at Crafty Moms Share

Think Pink Sunday at Flamingo Toes

Make the Scene Monday at Alderberry Hill

Inspiration Monday Party at Twelve O Eight

Inspire Me Monday at Create With Joy
Krafty Inspiration Thursday at Krafty Cards, etc
Craft-O-Maniac Monday Link Up
Family Fun Friday at Happy and Blessed Home