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Includes statements from Development Matters (birth to age five) and the relevant ELGs in full, for the lead snap provocation.
Play a matching game using leaves
Early Learning Goal links
- Mathematics ELG: Numerical Patterns
- Understanding the World ELG: Past and Present
- Understanding the World ELG: People, Culture and Communities
- Understanding the World ELG: The Natural World
Characteristics of effective learning
Play, Be, C Units provide enabling environments with teaching and support from adults. Reflecting on the characteristics of effective teaching and learning, children will have opportunity to learn and develop by:
- Playing and exploring – children investigate and experience things, and ‘have a go’.
- Active learning – children concentrate and keep on trying if they encounter difficulties and enjoy achievements.
- Creating and thinking critically – children have and develop their own ideas, make links between ideas, and develop strategies for doing things.
Early Years Foundation Stage Statutory Framework: accessed November 2024. Available under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
What you’ll need
- Leaves from a variety of trees in your outdoor area or a variety of different shapes and sizes of leaves from the same tree
- PVA glue (if you want to stick them down)
- Card
- The arborist poster (PDF)
Duration
- 10 minutes to collect the leaves and prepare the snap card
- Time for the PVA glue to dry, dependant on the temperature
- 10 minutes or so for the activity.
STEM vocabulary to introduce
Tree, leaf, leaves, bark, branch, inside, outside, lumpy, bumpy, knobbly, rough, ridged, bent, straight, smooth, soft, silky, velvety, silky, shiny, glossy, long, short, wide, narrow, thick, thin, dark, light, big, small, veins, next to, in front of, behind, under, on top of, beside, attached, lobes, segments, points
What to do – preparing the snap cards
Collect leaves from around your setting, making sure you have a variety of shapes, colours and sizes. You will need to collect enough leaves for each child in the group to have one leaf each. Stick each leaf to the centre of an A5 sized piece of card using a thin layer of PVA glue. Leave the cards to dry before using.
If you don’t have time to prepare the cards, you can just collect the leaves, but these will probably not be able to be reused during the activity, so you will need to collect a lot more leaves.
Examples of some prepared cards. Click to enlarge.
What to do – playing the game
Tell the children that they are going to be arborists. You could show them the arborist poster.
Tell the children that they are going to be observant like arbortists and notice what different leaves are like. They are also going to be resilient as they might not find a matching leaf straight away, and will need to keep looking until they find one to match.
Give each child a leaf card or leaf. Ask them to go outside and find another leaf that matches. In the autumn and winter the children can collect the leaves from the ground. In the spring and summer, they may need to match the leaves or cards to leaves still on the trees.
When they have all found a matching leaf or tree, you can swap the cards around and play again.
Questions to ask to support and extend learning
- Is the leaf in your hand the same as the leaf on the card?
- Is it the same shape/size/colour?
- Can you describe your leaf?
- Does it have any points? How many?
- Does it have any lobes or segments? How many?
- Who has the biggest/smallest leaf?
- Where did you find your leaf?
- Was in under/on top of/next to/beside/attached to the tree?
Other things to try
Autumn
You could see how many different coloured autumn leaves you can find, or how many different colours of leaves you can find from the same tree.
Winter
If you have any evergreen trees in your setting you could compare these leaves to the dead leaves of deciduous trees. You could dig around in the fallen leaves to find matching leaves.
Spring
You could find petals from the blossom and buds from the trees to match. You could investigate whether all blossom and buds look the same.
Summer
You could see how observant the children are now as some leaves may be quite high up in the trees. Can they match the leaves to the correct trees?
The science of leaves
We have put together some useful information about the science of leaves to accompany this activity. Don’t worry, this is for your information only and to help you answer any questions children may have. We don’t expect you to explain this to the children in your setting!
What is photosynthesis?
Photosynthesis is the name for the process by which plants uses water and carbon dioxide to make glucose (a type of sugar) and oxygen. It is a chemical reaction which takes place in the special structures in the leaves called chloroplasts. The green colour is due to the presence of chlorophyll, which is the chemical used in photosynthesis, and which has a green colour.
Sunlight provides the energy for photosynthesis to happen, which means that plants can only make glucose during the day.
Trees use the glucose to produce energy, or make more complex carbohydrates. These can be stored by the tree, or formed into the materials in the leaves, trunk and other parts of the tree.
Why do leaves change colour?
The leaves of deciduous trees (deciduous means “fall off”) change colour and fall off the trees in autumn. The leaves of evergreen trees remain green and intact all year. Leaves are green because they contain a green-coloured chemical called chlorophyll. During the autumn, days become darker and the trees can’t make as much glucose.
In deciduous trees, the green chlorophyl is broken down to smaller molecules and reabsorbed by the tree. This means that the other pigment molecules in the leaves, which tend to be yellow, orange and red, can be seen.
Why are some trees evergreen?
Evergreen trees have green leaves all year, which they shed continuously as new leaves grow. Evergreen trees grow slowly, photosynthesising all year round.
The leaves of evergreen trees have a thick waxy coating of resin to protect them. This prevents the water inside the leaves from freezing and damaging them in the winter. Many evergreens also have needle-shaped leaves, to conserve water, but the leaves can be a variety of shapes and sizes. Conifers, hollies and rhododendrons are examples of evergreen trees.
Deciduous trees loose their leaves during the winter because otherwise the water inside the leaves would freeze and expand, rupturing the leaves and causing damage to the tree.
Why are leaves different shapes?
In general, larger leaves mean that trees can carry out more photosynthesis and make more glucose, so bigger leaves are better. However, leaf shape is also determined by factors such as overheating, freezing, getting water to the leaf cells, and wind resistance.
Leaves can grow large if they have enough water and do not overheat. However, larger leaves lose more water from the plant and cool down more quickly. This is why tropical plant leaves can grow to be huge in places that are warm and wet, and small-leaved plants thrive in dry deserts and high up mountains. Small leaves, like pine needles, which are packed together tightly can stay warmer so survive in colder climates, whereas leaves with lobes can help plants to cool down more easily.
Getting water to leaf cells is easier if a leaf is long and thin, or has a simple branched shape matching vein patterns. More rounded shapes require more complex networks.
Leaf structures that can curl, have holes or lobes, or many small compound leaves are less likely to be damaged by wind than large, flat leaves.
