Winter Story Stretcher: "The Fox and the Falling Leaves" by Julia Rawlinson

Most folks would probably think of Julia Rawlinson's The Fox and the Falling Leaves (also under the title Fletcher and the Falling Leaves) as Fall themed book and, indeed it does whimsically share the tale of a young fox, Fletcher and his fruitless attempts at "saving" his favorite tree from this thing called Autumn that is responsible for causing all of its leaves to fall off. As Fletcher tries again and again to help restore his poor, beloved tree to its leafy Summer self, he is confronted again and again by Autumn's seemingly gravitational pull and some other woodland critters who are of little help. There is a magical Wintry surprise at the end that makes this the perfect book to transition seasons. We chose this book for a star role in our Winter Break Story Stretchers Playcamp on the afternoon before Winter solstice and to celebrate and honor Autumn's departure with a fun STEAM activity to go along with it.

Lest you think that our Story Stretcher times look picture book perfect, there's Y wandering in the background and S trying to hear the story over his singing...

"Tree, tree!" shouted Y, gleefully bringing me the pipe cleaner tree from our activity setup at the table!

We gathered (more or less) on the rug for our story together, and then took to the table for our STEAM Challenge to Build a Winter Tree. This is the perfect activity to combine fine motor skills, art, engineering and creativity as the children got to use cotton ball "snow" and a prepared pipe cleaner tree trunk (I found a great tutorial and the inspiration for this project on the blog Play Trains!) If you have older kids, they can shape and form their own tree trunks and branches from pipe cleaners. Cotton balls have a lovely way of sticking to the pipe cleaners and Y even discovered how to pull them apart and stretch the cotton like drifts of snow. I was quite impressed! S followed suit. The harder challenge is getting loose parts like glass gems, sea glass and mosaic tiles to withstand slipping through the branches to taking the whole tree down! It's a challenge we were up for! As the boys were busy building, designing, constructing and reconstructing, I thought it might be fun to add in some Fletcher to Fox characters, and offered them each a small toy fox from our collection of winter forest animals.

I love using the collection of building prompts from Pocket of Preschool's Winter STEM pack to introduce our activity at the table. It supports the print rich environment I strive for and provides visual inspiration as well. To try this activity at home you will need pipe cleaners (black or brown) for your tree base and cotton balls for snow (alternatively you could use fiber fill or wool batting). Glass gems, mosaic tiles and/or sea glass make a lovely optional addition and the addition of a toy fox or other small toy woodland animals could make for some great small world play and storytelling.

I almost never know what activities will draw the boys in (one or both) and which will sustain their attention and curiosity. This one was a huge winner!  I aim to set up our area in ways that are thought provoking and visually appealing. The formality of wooden bowls added a sense of beauty and reverence to their work area and I think that goes a long way in capturing their interest. I love finding these at secondhand stores. I find them super inexpensively and they are great for storing and organizing art materials, loose parts, small toys, even jewelry and small personal objects. They are also a lovely addition to dramatic and sensory play. Both boys really had a great time with this activity and were quite pleased when I showed them that all of the parts to recreate it are readily available in our Winter STEAM drawers or other easy to access areas in our play space. I think it is especially important when children do take an interest in an activity like this to make it available for recreation and repetition.

With that, we've officially said so long to Autumn and welcomed Winter! And we will be back soon with some more Winter themed Story Stretcher fun. Until then...

Happy Reading and Happy Playing!