This week's book of the week is one of my fall favorites, "Leaf Man" by Lois Ehlert.
As you can see from the cover image, the author arranged leaves so that they look like a person. Throughout the story, the leaves change into different shapes (turtles, chickens, a cow, etc.). The illustrations really help you see which children have difficulty seeing the "whole" versus the individual "parts."
This year, I'm running a group with our fabulous occupational therapist. We worked on naming the pictures created by the leaves and imitating the repeated phrase while reading the story. Then we went outside on a nature walk to find leaves, acorns, and pinecones. We headed back inside and used the materials we collected to make Leaf Man collages. Here are a few examples:
There are a TON of language opportunities with this activity and you can adapt it to meet the needs of just about any language group!
What would you use this activity to target?
