Autumn Leaves – Dinoduo

Leaves are falling thick and fast at this time of the year. The colours are magnificent and the ground has a beautiful carpet of leaves underfoot. Dinoduo love nothing better than a crisp autumn day walking through the leaves. Autumn leaves are great for active play. Here are some activities to do with your pre-schooler with all the lovely autumn leaves over the coming weekend.

Walking through the dry leaves, enjoying the rustling sound the leaves make as you and your child make your way through them.
Kicking the leaves as you walk through them, creating lots of crunchy noises is a great way to develop single leg balance.
Sweeping leaves. Yes, your child will actually enjoy this job!!! Give your child a small sweeping brush or rake and have them sweep the leaves into a big pile. Working with two hands on the brush, pushing the leaves along is a great bilateral co-ordination activity and a great way to build up the muscles of the arms and shoulders. The weight of the leaves as they sweep the leaves gives your child lovely feedback to their muscles.
Now that there is a big pile of leaves, have your child jump into the pile to scatter them all around again!! Jumping is a great bilateral co-ordination activity. Autumn leaves provide endless active fun of sweeping and jumping.
Provide your child with a box or a wheelbarrow to gather the leaves into. All that bending down, scooping up and putting the leaves into the box is lovely active play idea. It is also great for strengthening legs, arms and trunk muscles and develops co-ordination.
Once the box or wheelbarrow is full, have your child carry the box (with some help) or push the wheelbarrow to another area and dump it all out again. Lots of muscle feedback and strengthening with this activity
Autumn leaves are also great for making lovely collages. Picking up, sticking and pasting leaves to paper is a great activity for fine motor development and a lovely sensory activity

Have you any good Autumn Leaves ideas?

Photo by Nick Nice on Unsplash