We took walks around our school to see the fall leaves.
Here is one tree that was changing colors.
We looked at the leaves to see how the green from the chlorophyll was disappearing and the other colors were showing. A parent of one of our classmates who is a Botanist, Dr. Doug Soltis, came to talk to us about fall leaf colors. He taught us about the pigments in leaves called chlorophyll (green), carotenoid (orange and yellow), anthocyanin (red), and tannin (brown). We read science picture books about fall leaves. Here are some leaves changing colors.
We collected leaves from a tree near our school and put them in order from green to deep red with one leaf on the end that was different from the others because it was very pale.
Dr. Soltis helped our class do a science experiment so we could see how a green leaf has many pigments. We rubbed green leaves onto special paper. Then he put the paper in a chemical. After a little while, the paper showed all the pigment colors in the leaf. He helped us understand that when the leaf is making chlorophyll, the green chlorophyll covers up the other pigments. When trees stop making chlorophyll in the Fall, the other colors start showing!
Wow! Fall Leaf science is really cool!!!
We made a Fall Leaf Days of School Quilt. We put up a new patch each day until we had 25 patches in all. Here is the quilt.
The quilt has oak leaves, aspen leaves, maple leaves, and apple leaves. We wrote math comments about patterns and number ideas in the quilt.
We hope you enjoyed our Fall Leaf Lessons!
***All documents on our classroom web pages are copyrighted. The text and images are for educational use only. Please honor the integrity and original ownership of all text, design and images. We request that you not replicate the webpage designs nor publish the images and text without permission. For permission contact Kristi Rennebohm Franz at kfranz@psd267.wednet.edu