One of our favorite children’s books to read in Autumn is Fall Leaves Fall! It’s a colorful little book about two brothers enjoying leaves in the fall and all of their Autumn adventures–raking leaves, jumping in leaf piles, making leaf art, and more. As we were reading, Asher had some questions about what the characters were doing with the leaves. To help give Asher a better understanding of raking leaves, I set up a pretend play activity for him.
Using a packet of fake leaves from the Dollar Tree and a kid’s toy rake, Asher (and the big kids) pretended to rake leaves in our living room. When the leaves were all raked into a pile, he counted to three and jumped onto the pile of leaves. While the sounds and smells of raking leaves were missing, Asher did get a chance to experience the gross motor movements involved in raking a pile of leaves.
Raking leaves is a good activity to help kids in motor planning and proprioception. While watching Asher rake, his movements looked awkward to me. We will continue this activity a few more times to practice and see if his movements become more fluid and less robotic.
Raking Leaves Pretend Play Materials
We own and love the Toysmith Kid’s Metal Leaf Rake With Hardwood Handle
A Book & a Big Idea
Want more Autumn and Thanksgiving activities inspired by kid’s books? A group of bloggers at iHomeschool Network are sharing their activities for their favorite Fall books today. Go see the rest of the great ideas at the Book & a Big Idea Blog Hop!
Love this Sara!! Too cute and simple.
Thanks! I like simple. You won’t find much that is complicated around here!
This is such a cute idea! Thanks for linking up with Tuesday Tutorials #pintorials
How cute!! Thanks for sharing this idea! I’ll bet my girls would love it! Now I’ll just have to get the rake (that’s sat outside since last fall) cleaned up enough that I’d want it in my house.
Love it – and great practice for raking real leaves!
How very sweet.