Leaves - For School-Ager's

It has been awhile, but this week I also did the School-Age program. Our topic was about leaves - the importance of leaves and why they fall every autumn. 

I have mentioned before that I trade age-groups with another librarian for a week every session so that we can cross-train for when our positions rotate. To give both librarians as many opportunities for growth as possible, we rotate every couple years and we will actually be rotating starting in December (more to come about that at a later date). 

So this was a great opportunity to work with some of the kids that I will get to work with weekly, starting in January!

1. Reading:

We read the book "The Little Yellow Leaf" by Carin Berger.

2. Discussion:

I used the book "Leaves" by Melanie Waldron from the Plant Parts Juvenile Nonfiction series to discuss why leaves are important and what they provide for us and for the plant. 

Each page had different topics related to leaves (flowering plants, seedling leaves vs. true leaves, etc.) that gave us plenty to discuss about leaves. 

3. Activity

A couple years ago, a volunteer group in our community disbanded. They wanted to use up the funds they had been donated and generously offered them to our library for our program supplies. Our manager decided, for one of the purchases, to buy several microscopes. It's the first program that I had decided to use them almost as a test to see how the kids would handle them.

I set up the microscopes and several of the sample slides, that were purchased with the microscopes, of leaves. One slide was of a pine leaf, one was of a fern spore, and the third was of a blade of blue grass. I also printed out pictures that showed enlarged images of what the kids saw under the microscope so that they could take a look after viewing it under the microscope slide.

*It was a learning curve. If I use the microscopes in the future, I would like to have the same slide for all three microscopes because the group at my program was larger than anticipated and it was hard for everyone to wait their turn.

4. Craft

Our craft was leaf etchings. My library assistant and I gathered leaves from the trees around the library. The participants got to choose several leaves and we taped them with the leaf underside taped down against the cardstock. I let the school-agers choose between crayon and color pencils, and they went to town making their own leaf etchings. 

Below are example crafts that I made before the program. Labeling the leaf parts was optional, but most of my kids were too engrossed in making additional leaf etchings to get to labeling their leaves.