Spray Bottle and Collecting Leaves: We’re Going on a Leaf Hunt!

My daughter loves the book, We’re Going on a Bear Hunt (affiliate link to Amazon – it’s no extra cost to you, but we get a little bit of money back if you use this link).

It also happens to be one of my favorite camp songs!

So, you can imagine my joy when I came across We’re Going on a Leaf Hunt
by Steve Metzger.  The book is about three young children who go on a hike together to find colorful, fall leaves.  The rhythm of the story is similar to the bear hunt version, but the adventure is very different.  Instead of searching for a bear, these children find many treasures along the way.  I love how the book identifies various types of leaves and talks about fall colors.  After enjoying this book, Lil and I went on our own leaf hunt!Lil is very hard to slow down these days as she has taken to riding her new bicycle.  She took off on her bike while she proudly stashed a spray bottle in her front pouch.  Do you know what I’m talking about — the little fanny pack-type bags that attach to the handle bars?  She rocks that look!  As we rode along, we also picked up some leaves and flowers to put in her bicycle bag.  When we arrived at our playground, we started spraying the leaves to see what types of prints they would make.  This has been one of the advantages of a hot September: we still get to use spray bottles to help stay cool!

Soon, we arranged our collection into a circle to play a game:

Instead of making prints on the hot cement, I asked her to spray the flowers, then the leaves.  I varied the questions like: spray the longest one and spray the ones that are no longer green.  She loved getting to play the “game” all the while discerning similarities and differences in our collection – she also got very skilled at spraying the bottle, which is hard fine motor work!  When she was done, she took to spraying down the entire playground with water…which led to one happy daughter 🙂

Thanks for the read!

Are the leaves changing color where you live yet?