This week in my Commonwealth class I was teaching a lesson on the changing Fall leaves and woodland animals.  It was so fun and successful I wanted to share it along with the story book I made- for FREE!

The Lesson:

We started with reading the following story, but with a catch…. depending on the ages of the students (I teach 3 different age groups) we assigned a different voice for each animal (baby, old man, cowboy, etc.) and all that animal’s lines were read in that voice.  For the students who were old enough to read I assigned a student an animal and let them pick the voice and they read that animal’s lines in the silly voice.  For the younger students that can’t read yet I read the parts in the voices they suggested.

Download the book here.
     

Discussion

After reading the book we talked about how each animal thought the leaves were changing for different reasons. Just like the animals have different perspectives, people/kids do too.  We then talked about the different characteristics of each animal (see picture below) and we defined any of the words in the descriptions that the students didn’t know.  Then I gave them each the picture below and had them choose which animal they would most like to be like based on it’s characteristics.

Once they chose an animal I gave them the matching foam sticker to that animal- I purchased these at Hobby Lobby- with their 50% off sale they were only $2.49 for a package of 90 animal stickers that was more than enough.

Here is the link to the Hobby Lobby Stickers.

Activity

Then I gave each student a scratch off leaf, also from Hobby Lobby- $1.24 for 24 leaves and 12 sticks with their 50% off sale.  I told them that like in the story, these leaves have a hidden secret color under them.  I showed them how to scratch a design in the leave to reveal the hidden colors.  Then I gave them each a stick and told them they could scratch a leaf design, a picture of their animal, or write things they are grateful for on the leaf.

Here is the link to the Hobby Lobby scratch off Leaf.

It was a fun lesson and the students had so much fun with it!  I hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

*Pictures belong to Hobby Lobby and were for educational purposes only.