Making a leaf book

Today we decided to learn about autumn leaves. All the leaves here are turning colours and we've noticed lots of gorgeous reds and yellows, along with many acorns and squirrels. Nothing thrills Rachael as much as seeing squirrels along the back fence. She will be sitting at the table, eating lunch and we'll all be chatting when Rachael will suddenly whisper "SHHHHH!!! See that squirrel on the fence? He's SOO cute!"


Rachael eating onion grass we found on the trail. Tasty! heh.


These are all our leaves laid out on the table.


This is the beginning of his leaf book. I just cut regular white paper in half and took a few sheets and stapled them at the fold to make the book. Trevor spelled his title phonetically. The leaf pictured is a "Holly Leaf" (Hole lef)


Rachael showing off her book. She pretty much coloured leaf drawings she did in any pretty colour she had. One leaf she coloured blue. heehee.


I drew the leaf, Trevor coloured it exactly as he saw it- green veins with orangey-red leaf.


While they coloured I looked up WHY leaves are so pretty in the fall. We learned they are always that colour, but the Chloryfyll (hm, I am misspelling that, I know) covers up the autumn colors. Trevor was amazed to know the plant makes glucose for food (he knows glucose is sugar). We found out that the reason for the red in maple leaves is excess glucose the tree doesn't need. This glucose turns red, while other maple leaves are yellow because they don't have this build up of glucose. Quite interesting, really. We discovered oak leaves are brown from excess waste in the leaves (we equated it to waste that leaves our bodies. So brown oak leaf has waste like we have poop. Don't know if it is the same, but it amused us!).

So, all in all, an interesting day!

Oh, and just because she is cute, Ariel doing her "handwriting" while the kids were doing it this morning.