Toddler Art: Celebrating Fall...with a hedgehog

I must admit that I have been lagging a little bit this week because I caught my first cold of the season so I was trying to keep my Family Storytime and Toddler Art programs relatively easy for me this week. Funny thing is, I find myself seeming to do an even better job when I'm feeling a little under the weather because I want to continue to do my best. Anyway, this cold disappeared fast and I was able to put on another fun Toddler Art. 

I wanted to stay with the "celebrating fall" theme that I had done in Preschool Picasso. After searching my Pinterest board for inspiration, I settled on the last craft I needed to get started with prep. 

I always like to conserve for these programs and realized that when I was using the die-cut machine to cut out leaves for the Preschool Picasso program, that I could use the beautiful leaf cutout pattern scraps for another craft. 

So it was decided. Our first craft would be painting white construction paper with fall colors and glue our leftover leaf cutout patterns on top. And thanks to Pinterest, our second craft would be to make a hedgehog using leaves.

I found a book to tie hedgehogs and leaves together in Herbie's Big Adventure by Jennie Poh. This is a story about a baby hedgehog, Herbie, who leaves his mommy for the first time to explore and hibernate. This was not only a great story to match my theme, but all the parents found it adorable and we learned about being brave and the changing seasons. The illustrations are modern and beautiful.

Despite the story being on the longer side, the kids were very attentive during this story and it allowed for a few of the families who came in late to hear a little bit of it.

After explaining each craft, it was time to get started.

The painted leaf craft gave good painting practice for the younger group and helped them practice holding the paint brush. They experimented with combining colors and seen how their leaves ended up being their painted colors on their paper. 

The hedgehog craft gave them some time to color and have some sensory learning using the leaves with their smell and texture. It was a bit hard for the little ones to wait for the glue to dry to make the leaves stick, but that was good practice being patient.

A few of the families took some hedgehog books to be checked out, which are pictured below.

 It's always a pleasure to read a picture book to a group and I still smell the leaves we used for the craft. Happy Fall!