1-2-3 Come Make An Autumn Dangler With Me

There's nothing quite like adding a bit of craftiness to a writing assignment, to get your kiddos excited and down to business.

With that in mind, I created this "Welcome Fall" dangler.
I call it that because the leaves are "falling" as they dangle from the ceiling.

They look amazing as they swirl & twirl just like real leaves.
PK kiddos can simply color and cut their leaves.

Run the templates off on a variety of colors of construction paper, so that older students can complete the writing prompt: "Leaves CAN-HAVE-ARE..." on the back of the leaves, then cut them out.

I've included a worksheet for this that you can do as a whole group, or individually, for pre-writing practice.
A completed template makes it easy for you to incorporate.

The back also sports a "Red, orange, yellow and brown.  Autumn leaves flutter down." poem.  The front simply says: Welcome Fall. I chose open-faced letters so that students could add a bit of color.

You can also dream up another writing prompt as well, such as "Why I Like Autumn" or describe fall with some nice descriptive adjectives.

I tossed these into Diane's Dollar Deals, to make adding that excitement inexpensive, quick, easy & of course super-fun.

For that finishing touch, my students ran their leaves through a crimping roller.
They came out looking like corrugated cardboard, which makes for an awesome 3D effect that will have passersby saying: "Cool!" "How'd you do that?"  If you look closely, you can see these "wavy lines" in the photo.

You can pick up one of these cool tools at most craft and scrapbooking stores.  Mine was $18 and well worth the money, as my kiddos LOVE using Mr. Cruncher Muncher each month.  It's a fun way for them to strengthen their finger muscles too.

Click on the link to grab this delightful Dollar Deal from Diane: Welcome Fall Writing Prompt Craftivity.  Here's hoping you get a chance to make time for a little crafty-creative writing this fall. And . . .

If you're one of those blessed teachers who have time to do a craft "just for fun" (like the good old days), your kiddos will absolutely LOVE "Autumn Splendor". 

It's another one on my Dollar Deals, and my personal favorite fall craft. 

The photo does not do the finished products justice, as they turn out so amazing!!!!!

Some of my kiddos actually squeal with delight as I carefully peel the wax paper off their melted crayon creation.  They are so proud of this project. 

I tossed in some upper and lowercase letter practice for the "Alpha Trees" that are also part of this packet, so take heart if you're dying to do something crafty, and need a reason why.

Today's featured FREEBIE is also a leaf craft.  It's super-simple and a quick, easy & fun way to reinforce the science vocabulary word chlorophyll, which your kiddos will be learning with any study of leaves.

All little ones do is glue half of a folded yellow, red, or orange leaf to a green "cholorophyll" leaf. 

Explain that the colored leaves are that color because they lost their ...(lift up the flap) to reveal the word chlorophyll and the green leaf. 

This FREEBIE is in the equally free "Leaf Man" packet.  It's one of the first fall things I posted years ago, before classes, software, clip art & fonts were purchased, so it's not up to my quality of standards today... 

But hey, it's free and still fun. As you can see, our leaf men turned out rather awesome! Afterwards, we read Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert.  

Well that's it for today.  The leaves have not started turning as yet, a little unusual for October here in Michigan.

However the nights have been pretty cool, so Mother Nature will soon be turning heads.  Wishing you a colorful day.

"If you can't be in awe of Mother Nature, there's something wrong with you." -Alex Trebek