This was not one of my more successful Science Storytimes. The intention was to sort leaves by various attributes, as modeled so wonderfully here. However, it was a gorgeous fall day, and I only had two children come to the program, both very young (two and three, perhaps?). We read Counting on Fall and then talked about leaves a little. I passed out a bunch of leaves I had collected and the children happily began sorting them into piles based on color. However, since I’d expected more children, I had a LOT of leaves. In retrospect I should have only given each of the two children a handful, but instead I just split the pile in half. That meant that it took a fair amount of time to get through all of the leaves, and by the time they were done sorting by color, they had both more or less lost interest in the project and were asking to go play. I want the programs to be engaging, so once I realized I’d lost momentum, I just ended the program. I think the activity is still a good one, and next year I will try again. An older audience may have been more responsive, and less leaves per child would definitely have been more effective.
