(bright playful music) - Hello, little learners.

Welcome back to our pre-K and TK classroom.

My name is Miss Lara.

Can you tell me your name?

Ooh, hello.

I'm so glad that you're with me this morning.

I'm feeling so happy and grateful to be here with you.

How are you feeling today?

So, you know, I have a feeling song that we'll sing together to help remind us to check in on how we're feeling.

Do you remember our song?

The tune is "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star."

So, let's sing it, ready?

♪ I have feelings, so do you ♪ ♪ Let's sing about a few ♪ ♪ I am happy ♪ Make your happy face.

♪ I am sad ♪ Crying face.

♪ I am scared ♪ Ooh!

♪ I am mad ♪ Stomp those feet.

Give me a scowl.

♪ I am proud of being me ♪ ♪ That's a feeling too, you see ♪ ♪ I have feelings, you do too ♪ ♪ We just sing about a few ♪ So, I hope that you check in on how your heart and body are feeling throughout our time together.

That really affects how your brain thinks and learns.

Okay, so we have lots to do today.

Today is day five of the five days that we'll be together this week.

Let's see last magnet on our 10 frame.

One, two, three, four, five.

It's Friday.

And so, we're gonna finish up our work about fall and autumn and how the leaves change colors, there's a chill in the air.

Might eat some pumpkin pie or chomp on some delicious apples.

Of course, we have another book to share.

We're gonna do some shared writing and then go over to our project place where we're gonna make a leaf man.

That's gonna give you a clue about what our story is today.

So, before we get to that, let's do our finger play for the week.

Now, it has five leaves.

Now, if you don't have leaves like I do on a felt board, get your fingers out and put one down, everyone, every time a leaf tumbles away.

So, are you ready for our song?

It goes like this.

♪ Five little leaves on a tree one day ♪ ♪ Happily in the wind they play ♪ ♪ Then a strongest of wind ♪ ♪ Blows through the town ♪ ♪ Whoosh ♪ ♪ And one little leaf comes tumbling down ♪ Now there are four.

♪ Four little leaves on a tree one day ♪ ♪ Happily in the wind they play ♪ ♪ Then a strongest of wind ♪ ♪ Comes through the town ♪ ♪ Whoosh ♪ ♪ And one little leaf comes tumbling down ♪ There are one, two, three leaves left.

Now for a bonus, I want you to think about how many eyes are left.

Ooh, that'll get your brain thinking.

Let's start our song on three, here we go.

♪ Three little leaves on a tree one day ♪ ♪ Happily in the wind they play ♪ ♪ Then a strongest of wind ♪ ♪ Blew through the town ♪ ♪ Whoosh ♪ ♪ And one more little leaf came tumbling down ♪ Now, there's just a pair or two leaves left.

♪ Two little leaves on a tree one day ♪ ♪ Happily in the wind they play ♪ ♪ Then a strongest of wind ♪ ♪ Blew through the town ♪ ♪ Whoosh ♪ ♪ And that little leaf came tumbling down ♪ That means there's just one left.

♪ One lonely leaf on a tree one day ♪ ♪ Happily in the wind it plays ♪ ♪ Then a strongest of wind ♪ ♪ Blew through the town ♪ ♪ Whoosh ♪ ♪ And one little leaf came tumbling down ♪ Now, how many leaves are left?

Zero.

And that's how many leaves are left on some of the trees when it's autumn time, or another word for autumn, fall.

So, let me put that down right here.

Let my leaves fall like they do in this season and we're gonna move on to our letter.

I wonder what character is going to write to us today.

Let's see.

Look at all these words in our letter.

So, you remember we start on the left and slide to the right.

So, it goes like this.

"The Wheels On The Bus" is our tune.

♪ Let's read the words from left to right ♪ ♪ Left to right ♪ ♪ Left to right ♪ ♪ Let's read the words from left to right ♪ ♪ That's the way we read words ♪ So, let's see, it says, "Dear Ms. Lara, I am a leaf man."

A what?

A leaf man?

Never heard of such a thing.

"I go where the wind blows.

Have you ever seen me on the ground?"

I don't think so.

Have you ever seen a leaf man on the ground?

"Next time you are on a nature walk, try to find me.

Love, Leaf Man."

Leaf man?

I wonder if it's a man made out of leaves, a man covered in leaves, hmm.

Let's see if our book will tell us.

So, here is our book that Ms. Maria left for us, "Leaf Man."

Look at the front cover.

Do you see the leaf man there?

Look at his leaf head and he has two acorn eyes.

Ooh, and a spiky thing for a nose.

Have you seen these spiky things on the ground?

Ooh, don't step on them, they hurt.

Two arms and a body.

This book was written by Lois Ehlert.

That's the author and the illustrator of this book.

That means they wrote the words and drew the pictures.

Leaf Man.

Look at all these different leaves.

If you have this book, try to find these leaves outside.

Leaf Man used to live near me in a pile of leaves.

So, there he is, there's Leaf Man.

But yesterday, the wind blew, whoosh, Leaf Man away.

He left no travel plans.

So, there he is.

The last time I saw him, he was headed east past the chickens toward the marsh, over the ducks and geese.

A leaf man's got to go where the wind blows.

Now, if you ever noticed a leaf in the wind, it's true, the leaves go where the wind blows.

He blew over the fields of pumpkins and winter squash.

So, there he is.

And you have a little bonus, if you see the little mouse in that picture too.

Actually two little mice, there's another one over there.

And flew over the turkey, past potatoes, carrots and cabbage in rows.

Do you see the turkey?

Look, it's made out of leaves.

Look.

Here's the turkey.

Then he blew out of sight.

Where is Leaf Man?

Is he drifting west above the orchards or over their prairie meadows, past the spotted cows?

Look at all those cows made out of leaves.

They are spotted because the leaves are browning.

A leaf man's got to go where the wind blows.

Maybe Leaf Man's gliding on a lake breeze.

Ooh, gliding.

That's a word you might look up the definition to.

Or flying around the river.

This is my favorite one.

It's a fish made out of leaves.

Following butterflies, going south.

A leaf man's gotta go where the wind blows.

He might even be traveling north above leaves that look like him or flying over mountains with a flock of birds.

Look at all those birds.

When Leaf Man looks down on earth, is he lonesome for a home?

I wonder, is he lonely?

This, I do know, where a leaf man will land, only the wind knows.

So, listen for a rustle and believe, maybe you'll find a leaf man waiting to go home with you.

The end.

So, what did you think?

Did you like that story of the leaf man?

Remember, you can check out more stories about fall and autumn and leaves at your local library or on the Sora app.

Now, we're gonna move over to our writing space.

We're gonna do some shared writing about autumn or fall.

So, let's walk over to that.

I'm gonna grab my pen here and you can see, there's a giant leaf here that says autumn or fall.

So, we're gonna write the things that we remember that we learned this week about autumn or fall.

You'll have to think back to Monday's episode where we read the book about Pete, the cat.

Now, he wasn't sure he liked autumn at all, right?

He preferred summer, but at the end, he liked it.

There was one part of the story where he loved it the best and that was when he was playing football and he made a touchdown.

So, I'm gonna make a football that looks a little bit like a leaf (laughs).

Let's see if I can get it to look more like a football here.

So, in the fall, there's different sports that you play.

So, that's our football.

So, let's see, fall or autumn, you play sports.

Help me if you're at home, sound out the word sports.

S. P. O. R. T, T, T. S. Sports.

That might be one reason that you like fall or autumn.

What else happens in fall or autumn?

Do you remember?

We've been talking about leaves and trees and what happens to the leaves around this season.

So, here's my tree and around this season, the leaves start to fall.

So, we're gonna draw some falling leaves.

And our story, "Leaf and the Fall," there was a leaf that did not wanna fall.

It made all kinds of inventions so that it wouldn't fall or wouldn't hurt when it fell.

So, there's the leaf, maybe we'll make a pile of leaves down here.

They're already being raked up.

Okay, so leaves fall.

Help me write that word, leaves fall.

Let's see, those are two words.

Leave.

What letter makes the V sound?

Leaves.

And then, because it's another word, I'm gonna make a spaceman here, fall.

Fall, just like our autumn or fall.

What else happens in fall?

Of course, I have to bring food into it.

My favorite thing to eat in the fall is some pumpkin pie.

So, if you're drawing or writing, maybe some whip cream on top of it.

I'm gonna make it right here, pumpkin pie.

There's also, what?

Apples, that's right.

Make an apple here.

Pete, the cat, went to the orchard and baked some pumpkin pie, huh?

There's lots of yummy food.

So, let's write food.

If you're writing with me, let's do our beginning sound, F. Ooh, two Os and last sound that we hear, D, D. D, that's right, food, fall food.

How about our last thing to fill our space here?

What else happens in the fall?

The weather changes.

There's a chill in the air.

So, let's draw our wind.

Ooh, we don't wear bathing suits in the fall anymore, do we?

No, we bundle up with some blankets.

So, let's write the word wind.

What's the beginning sound you hear?

W, W. That's right, W. W, I, I.

Win, and last sound, wind.

There's lots of wind and weather changes.

Let's review very quickly what happens in the autumn or fall.

There might be different sports that you play, different foods that you eat like pumpkin pie or apples, but leaves fall down and the weather changes.

There's a chill in the air, isn't there?

All right, so now, we're going to go over to our project place because we're gonna finish up with the week with an activity that goes with our book, "The Leaf Man."

So, I wonder, how many steps is it gonna take me?

I say seven.

Let's see if I'm right.

One, two, three, four, five, was that more or less than seven?

Okay, so in our book, the author said to be on the lookout for a leaf man 'cause you can take it home with you.

So, I thought I'd make my own leaf man to keep at home with me.

So, for this activity, you're going to need to go on a nature walk and pick up some leaves, maybe some sticks.

And do you remember in the story, he had acorn eyes?

I just picked up little berries that I found.

Bunch of leaves of different colors, some glue, scissors and maybe a marker.

And of course, a piece of paper.

We're gonna make our own leaf man here.

I think I will use this beautiful red paper so that the colors of the leaves pop.

So, the very first thing I need to do to make my leaf man like my book is a head.

So, I'm gonna look at my leaves and see if I have a good head that I might be able to use.

Ooh, how about this one?

Think about the shape of your head.

Hmm.

I think I'm gonna put this one as my head.

This head is a little more oval, but we can make it work.

Now, sometimes because of the texture of the leaf, the glue doesn't like sticking on.

So, if you have that problem, do not get frustrated or get frustrated and then calm yourself down because there's an easy solution.

You can very easily just take a Q-tip or a paintbrush and paint on your glue, but I don't have that problem today.

Next, I have a head.

What else do we need?

Hmm, we need a body for our leaf man.

Our body.

Ooh, what should I use?

Maybe this beautiful green one or this beautiful yellow leaf.

I think I'll use this one.

I'm gonna take the stem of the leaf off and then I'm gonna add some glue to the back.

Now, if you don't wanna make a leaf man, you can make a leaf pet.

You can make a leaf dog, a leaf fish, a leaf cat, leaf spider (laughs).

That might be giving you a clue about what we're gonna learn about next week.

Okay, let's glue the body down.

What else does our leaf man need?

Some legs.

Ooh, I have just the leaf for legs.

But I think I might cut up my leaf so it's less round and more like a rectangle shape.

Feel free to do that too.

Cut up your leaves to the shape you would like if that's what you want.

Glue the back.

♪ To-to-to-to ♪ And put it down.

There's one leg, I'll show you, here is what it's looking like.

I'm gonna do another leg with another leaf.

Now, you can make all kinds of art with nature, it doesn't have to be leaves.

Get inspired, maybe go outside, go for a walk.

See what you can create.

I've even read that some people paint with just water and dirt.

You can make mud pies, lots of fun things.

Okay, here's another leg.

Cut it up into a rectangle.

Next, we need... What's that thing that helps us grab?

Arms, that's right.

So, I'm gonna make some arms here.

I think though that I'm gonna make it out of this leaf here.

Ooh, no, out of this leaf.

Perfect arms.

Just like this, glue the back of the leaf.

Notice, I have some greens, some yellow, some brown.

That's the beautiful thing about this time of year, all kinds of colors everywhere.

All right, here we go.

What is left?

Should we give him some eyes?

Okay, let's see, where are my little berries?

Don't roll away.

You can use a Sharpie to draw on eyes or add details, but I think I'm gonna add my little berries here.

Here's two eyes that are gonna help our leaf man see.

All right, I need to hold those down for about five seconds.

Help me count, one, two, three, four, five.

I take a little bit of glue.

Here's what it's looking like so far.

Oh (laughs).

My eye came off.

Needs a little more glue.

How are you gonna see if you don't have eyes, Leaf Man?

Did the wind blow it away?

Okay, next, let's add some ears and some hair and then I'm gonna show you another book that I thought was really, really fun and I might even show you some of the pictures.

Add a little bit, cut out some ears out of some leaves.

Now of course, you can just leave the leaves the shape that they are.

You don't have to cut them, but that's what I'm choosing to do.

You might choose to do the same as well.

Ears.

Oh, and then what's our leaf man going to eat with?

A mouth.

Now for that, I have a stick.

Oh, I think I'll leave...

I got a stick with a natural bend and I think that's going to be our mouth.

Here we go, put that around and down.

Now, make him happy.

Okay, hold it down, one, two, three, four, five, then I'll show you the finished product here.

Hopefully, the eyes will wanna stay.

They're kinda tricky.

Normally, I would let them dry a lot longer and then show you.

But here is what my leaf man is looking like.

Ooh, that eye wants to come down.

I won't hold it up quite so high.

Ooh, I can't wait to see what your leaf man looks like too if you make one.

Maybe make it a leaf brother or a leaf sister.

All right, I'm going to set that aside because there is a book that I wanna show you.

The book is called "Look What I Did With a Leaf!"

So this one, you can check out at your local library, but I wanted to show you some pictures of an artist who made some beautiful things with the leaf.

Check this out.

Ooh, that's kinda neat, huh?

You can find strong contrasting colors and make some paws.

Let's see what else, reds and brown leaf.

Ooh, they made a rooster and a frog and a fox with some leaves.

That would be a lot of fun to make, huh?

All right, let's see what else?

Ooh, this one's my favorite.

They made peacocks and a lion with some leaves.

I hope that you're inspired to look out for some leaves that you can make some stuff out of too.

All right, let's see down here I wanted to show you that if you check out this book, you actually get directions for the types and sizes and colors of leaves to look for.

So, look at that turtle right here.

It tells you, "Okay, here's how you build a turtle."

And there's one more that I missed, let me find it.

It's one of my favorites here too.

It's an elephant.

You can make an elephant out of leaves.

So, I hope that you check out this book and get inspired on your nature walk to create all kinds of magnificent creatures using leaves.

All right, boys and girls, I think my leaf man is a little bit dry now so I can hold him up so you can see him.

There he is.

Nope, the eye keeps wanting to fall down.

Stay, eye, stay.

All right, we have enough time to sing our long alphabet song and then I'll let you know what we're going to do next week.

So, sing along with me, okay?

If you have your alphabet cards ready, here's how it goes.

♪ A is more amazing ♪ ♪ That's what you are ♪ ♪ B is for brave ♪ ♪ That'll carry you far ♪ ♪ C is for caring and community ♪ ♪ And D is for determined to be the very best me ♪ ♪ E is for empathy ♪ ♪ Caring for all ♪ ♪ F is for friends that'll catch you when you fall ♪ ♪ G is for grateful for everything around ♪ ♪ And H is for hopeful ♪ ♪ There's more good to be found ♪ ♪ I is for imagine all the fun things we could do ♪ ♪ J is for joyful ♪ ♪ How I feel when I'm with you ♪ ♪ K is for kind to people and animals too ♪ ♪ And L is for love ♪ ♪ Put it in all that you do ♪ ♪ M is for mindful ♪ ♪ Be present every day ♪ ♪ N is for nice words and everything you say ♪ ♪ O is for original ♪ ♪ Always be you ♪ ♪ And P is for persevere until you make it through ♪ ♪ Q is for quiet ♪ ♪ Those bad thoughts ♪ ♪ R is for remember all the greatness that you've got ♪ ♪ S is for strong body and mind ♪ ♪ And T is for talent ♪ ♪ Why not make yours being kind ♪ ♪ U is for unique, special and loved ♪ ♪ V is for victorious ♪ ♪ Always rise above ♪ ♪ W is for worthy and wonderful too ♪ ♪ And X, don't X out those mistakes ♪ ♪ They're what make you you ♪ ♪ Y is for yes ♪ ♪ We're getting to the end of this rhyme ♪ ♪ And that's the alphabet ♪ ♪ I'll Z you next time ♪ Okay, I'm gonna tell you what we're going to do next week and it looks like I'll have just enough time to maybe add some hair to my leaf man 'cause I love brushing hair and making it all wild.

So next week, we're actually gonna see Mrs. Readwright with another wonderful art lesson.

And after that, you're gonna see me again and it's going to be a close to October or October and that's kind of a spooky month.

There's a special holiday if you celebrate where you go around knocking on people's doors and getting candy.

If you don't celebrate, it's still a fun time to learn about kind of creaky critters.

And we're gonna learn about one that a lot of people are scared of.

Can you guess what it is?

It's creepy and crawly.

Spiders, that's right.

We'll see if you join me next week that spiders are actually really good for our environment.

We're gonna make spider hat and I might, might, even bring in a spider for you to see if I'm not too scared.

Okay, so hopefully I'll see you next week.

Ooh, I have just a little bit of time.

Let me see if I can add some funky hair to my leaf man.

Now remember, if you make any of the projects that I show here, I'd love to see a picture of them and I wanna see what your leaf man looks like.

Or maybe it's a leaf woman or a leaf cat.

Okay, it looks like I have one funky hairdo here.

(laughs) We'll add one more, just enough time for our leaf man to say goodbye too.

There he is.

Goodbye, boys and girls.

(bright playful music)