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You are here: Home / Fall Activities / Preschool Leaf Sorting Activity with Free Printable Cards

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Preschool Leaf Sorting Activity with Free Printable Cards

November 1, 2016 by Sheryl Cooper

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Inside: This preschool leaf sorting activity is a great way to add fall science to your day. Try it after a nature walk! Includes free printable cards.

Fall is here, the colors are vibrant, and you are looking for a way to share it with your preschoolers.

Teachers, I (sort of accidentally) came up with a great activity! While we were outside during recess, one of my students noticed a few leaves on the ground. One was completely brown. One was a bright red. The other was changing from green to yellow. The fact that he not only noticed the differences, but then asked why, made the light bulb in my teacher brain go off.

When I got home, I created some colored leaf cards that I could print out. I had an idea for the following day when we’d go on a nature walk.

(Note: Scroll down to find the free leaf sorting printables.)

It was a huge hit! (Don’t you just love when that happens?) I suspected collecting leaves on our walk would be fun, but I was not prepared for the love they’d have when we actually used the cards to sort our findings.

Boom!

This one activity covers:

  • Large motor (the walk)
  • Science (wondering why the leaves are different colors)
  • Color recognition (sorting and classifying leaves by color)
  • Math (counting how many leaves we had of each color)
  • Social (discussing the experience)

And now for the details….

Preschool Leaf Sorting Activity with Free Printable Cards

 

Preschool Leaf Sorting Activity

The breakdown of what we did:

We started this leaf sorting activity by reading a favorite book, Going on a Leaf Hunt. (If you have not read it yet, you must!)

We then went on our own leaf hunt! I gave each of our preschoolers a plastic baggie to hold their findings as we took our walk.

 

Sorting Our Leaves by Color

I used our leaf sorting cards for this circle time activity. (Bonus! Scroll further down this post and get your free leaf printable cards!) I placed all of our leaves in a tray in the middle of the circle, along with our sorting cards.

Fall Leaf Sorting with Free Printable

 

I called each preschooler to pick out a leaf or two from the leaf tray and sort it by color.

Fall Leaf Sorting with Free Printable

 

 

Just like when we sorted apples by color, we found that some leaves had more than one color, so we then had to decide what color they mostly were.

Fall Leaf Sorting with Free Printable

Fall Leaf Sorting with Free Printable

We also noticed the different shapes of the leaves and the different shades of color.

Fall Leaf Sorting with Free Printable

Once all the leaves were sorted, we counted how many of each color we had and I documented it on the sheets of paper. The leaves were glued to the paper and hung on our bulletin board along with our watercolor tissue paper leaves.

Fall Leaf Sorting with Free Printable

 

Here’s your free printables!

Note: Since writing this post, I’ve changed the printables a bit and have added color pages that you can use to place the leaves on, rather than using construction paper.

Click on the photo to download:

Preschool Leaf Sorting Activity with Free Printable Cards

Preschool Leaf Sorting Activity with Free Printable Cards

More fall ideas to try:

20 Fun Activities for Your Squirrel Theme

15+ Spider Activities Your Preschoolers Will Love!

Big Collection of Fall Fine Motor Activities

 

 

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Filed Under: Fall Activities, preschool, Printables, Science Tagged With: colors, fall, preschool, printable, science

About Sheryl Cooper

Sheryl Cooper is the founder of Teaching 2 and 3 Year Olds, a website full of activities for toddlers and preschoolers. She has been teaching this age group for over 20 years and loves to share her passion with teachers, parents, grandparents, and anyone with young children in their lives.

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Comments

  1. Chinwe

    November 10, 2016 at 5:18 am

    thanks for this wonderful idea.
    am sure the kids will have a great fun sorting leaves.

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