Autumn Theme: Playroom Set-up and Intro to Process Art

"Look, Mommy! It's YELLOW!"

It's November and we're just now getting to our Autumn play theme. Where we live, this time of the season is actually far more conducive to experiencing the season change than its onset in September! The temperatures have finally dropped a bit and the leaves are changing beautifully outside. It's the perfect time of year to bring the learning and indoors out and the outdoors back inside! I was inspired to use this theme as an opportunity to explore through process art. Process art is a term that refers to artistic methods that are process-focus rather than product oriented. With children, process art is very much child-led where the adult provides the space, medium and materials but little more. The "artist" chooses how to use the materials rather than trying to complete a project with specific guidelines and directions. Both types of art exploration have value to children. Arts and crafts projects that have specific instructions and steps to complete help young artists learn to follow step-by-step instructions in addition to building skills around fine motor development including cutting, pasting, squeezing, spacial-relational concept, and drawing the lines, strokes and shapes necessary for writing and more. Here's a peek in our playroom and learning activities so far. We will continue to explore this theme indoors and out over the next few weeks. In addition to our art activities, we will also learn through play, literacy, science, sensory play, cooking and more!

Our Nature Observation Station is set up with favorite fall finds and Autmn-themed materials. As we explore outside, we're bringing little treasures home to our own yard and some indoors for observation. We will be using some of our collection for art activities as well.

I saw this DIY fine motor activity here and decided to fish out one of those old wipes containers I'd been saving "just in case" to try it out at home. My toddler LOVES it! He practices opening and closing the container, counting the leaves and putting them through the opening in the top over and over again!

Our felt wall has been transformed into an Autumn tree! The tree trunk is made from brown felt and the leaves are fabric leaves with a velcro dot on the backside to help them stick. My son's favorite part of it is using the basket to collect the leaves, carrying it around the house and "shopping!"

On a warmer afternoon, we brought our Autumn themed sensory bin out to the backyard. It's filled with dry oats, cinnamon sticks, cups and scoops for filling and pouring and some artificial apples and leaves. 

 We're observing Autumn weather patterns this month with a simple chart and stickers. This is both fun and educational to do and helpful in the area of preparing a routine-oriented toddler for changing outwear requirements when we go outside!

I have a collection of favorite Autumn themed songs, action rhymes and fingerplays. For easy organization, I keep my themed songs and rhymes like this on index cards connected to a metal ring. If I have props to go with it, zippered pencil pouches make a great way to keep it all together and ready to go. Join me in a future post to learn some of our Fall favorites so you can sing and say them at home!

We took our learning and exploration outdoors this morning for a visit to a nearby park. My son made his own game and physics experiment finding leaves to push down the slide! After some playtime on the playground, we went on a walking scavenger hunt to collect more signs of Autumn. We talked about the colors we saw, the sizes and shapes of different leaves and nuts. We observed squirrels running around and a couple of ducks resting in the pond. We collected a variety of objects from the ground in the tote bag I brought along. I also packed a roll of masking tape to make us each a sticky masking tape bracelet for collecting little leaves. This activity was taken from The Toddler's Busy Book by Trish Kuffner. It's a great Autumn activity and could be done in the Spring/Summer as well using wildflowers. We used some of the colorful leaves we found in this process art activity based on reading the book Leaf Man by author/illustrator Lois Elhert. 

Happy Autumn and Happy Playing!