Leaf Collection, naturalist activity for children
October 20, 2009 by Julia
Filed under Featured, kid projects and DIY, Resources
Anywhere that has plants works well for leaf collecting.
The weather is absolutely gorgeous of late, and before the deciduous trees drop their leaves, collecting leaves is a wonderful, educational activity to do with kids. I am not writing this particular activity as a laboratory experience but as an introduction to field observations and naturalism for early elementary age and younger. My kids, even the 18 month old, love to go out and pick leaves. We use a zippered bag to hold everything. (If you are not a “plant person,” it helps to have a picture of poison ivy or poison oak on hand just so you know what not to pick.)
For the very youngest children, simply gathering the leaves in the yard or neighborhood and mounting them on paper is challenging enough. We have found that the easiest way for a young child “to display” the leaves (making plates) is to use photo album pages, the kind that you peel back the plastic film. Rubber cement and construction paper work well too, but the rubber cement smell is strong especially for a little kid. Good old tape and paper work just fine too.
For an older child or at least one who is more inquisitive, here are variations to the leaf collecting process that incorporate higher levels of learning.
1. Determine if the leaf is simple or compound.
Source: Campbell's Biology
This is a surprisingly difficult task for a good number of kids, especially if a child grabs the leaflets from the petiole (stalk that connects the leaf to the stem) rather than collect the entire compound leaf. I have my preschooler look at the plant and try to find the axillary bud before picking the leaf.
2. Describe the leaf margins.
Source: vPlants.org
I keep this simple for my four year old: smooth (entire), round and bumpy (lobed), sharp and bumpy (serrated). We look at the leaf and a chart like this. I have her point to the picture that best matches her leaf. If my daughter is in the mood, we go a step further, and I have her classify the leaves by putting them into groupings based on similar leaf margins.
3. Making leaf “rubbings.”
Waxier leaves that have heavy veins work best. My daughter likes to put a piece of printer paper (the thinner, the better) right on top of the leaf. She uses a broken crayon, rubs the paper over the leaf, and the result is something that shows the vein patterns, which classify plants into these two groups.
Source: University of Hawaii, Botany department's website
4. Classifying dicot and monocot leaves from “flowering” plants.
My kids especially like to get into our small herb garden, which works well for identifying monocot and dicot leaves. I simplify the terminology again for my four year old to just “criss cross” or “straight” leaves. All the basil, mint families are dicots so they have criss cross patterns. All the ones in the onion family are monocots so they have straight patterns.
We talk about how some leaves have strong smells while some are not. Some are soft leaves, and others are rigid. I ask my daughter to identify as many properties of the leaves as she has words to describe. I ask my child to think that if she were a bug eating leaves, which kind of leaves would she want to eat and why. What kind of leaves would be easy or difficult to eat? I ask my child to think if she were a plant, what would she need to stop bugs from eating her leaves. For my just-learning-to-speak toddler, I crush aromatic leaves and let him smell them. I have him touch leaves of different textures.
There are endless possibilities to what one can do with a leaf collection. Older kids can use guides to identify plant species.
The idea here is not getting “right” answers or to learn big, scientific words. I want to foster observation skills and critical thinking.
I have done a variation of this activity with advanced biology students because it was required of them in the curriculum, and I am always surprised at how few kids have been exposed to naturalist activities in their childhood. Young children are naturally observant and inquisitive. They categorize. This is all part of the learning process, and my kids just eat up this kind of activity. Every time that we do this, we generate different ideas. Especially for a child who is deep in the “Why” stage, it is nice to turn around the “why” and open-ended questions around on them.
FYI: Area parks that have a wonderful variety of native species are Red Bud Park (though this has a lot of poison ivy), Hamilton Pool Park, and McKinney State Park.
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Great idea Julia! We have done a more basic game of ‘find and seek’ that can be done anywhere. One of us ‘closes’ their eyes, and the other goes around collecting leaves/plant life in small amounts (like 3 different species). Then, they bring them to the other player. That player then looks at each one, and tries to figure out which plant it came from. I also try to sneak in lessons on not putting these into mouths, plants that are poisonous, etc. We also talk about why plants might be poisionous (defense, etc).
I love your more scientific approach, thanks for the ideas!
Thanks for sharing Shirley. I like that “find and seek” idea.