A basket of leaves, the pretend kind.
One child took a handful, put both hands up, and threw them — then reached up to catch them coming down, laughing.
“Ooh — the leaves went all the way up and came back down again.”
That child picked up one that had landed and held it out to show.
An adult felt it. “Crackle, crackle. It's a soft one, this.”
Then both hands went back in, and this time the leaves went higher.
Four of them took maple leaves up in both hands and threw them straight above their heads.
“It's raining!”
“It really does come down like rain.”
Then a leaf on an open palm, and a puff of breath to send it off.
“Where will it go if you blow?”
They lay down on the ones that had landed, face down, and moved about on them.
Then they gathered the leaves into a path.
“Shall we walk along it?”
“Who's going first?”
And they went along it every way they could think of.
Maple leaves in every size and colour, with toy bowls and a basket.
One child put them into the basket one at a time. Another moved them across into a bowl.
Somebody else took them back out of the bowl to look at, then filled the bowl right up and tipped the whole lot over. And again.
Two of them ended up side by side, filling the same bowl.
Some shaking with both hands. Some held up to a nose.
Outside, the fallen leaves went under their feet, for the sound of them.
A bag of leaves on the floor. One child went over and sat down by it.
A flat hand pressed down on it — crackle. Then a look inside to see where the sound had come from.
Then both hands round the bag, shaking it up and down, and the leaves going everywhere in there while the eyes followed them.
A fingernail dragged across the plastic. Then a finger poking at one leaf and then another through the bag, for a long time.
Small bags went round after that, and they carried those about with them. Then an adult filled a big bag and tied it into a ball, and that one got kicked.
There was only one of those to begin with, and they all wanted it, so an adult made one each.
Out on a walk they watched the leaves coming off the tree, and picked up the ones already down.
“It's a present!”
“I'm giving it to my mum.”
They held on to those ones.
The rest went up to the top of the slide, to be thrown off it.
The hall had leaves all over it.
They laid paper over them and rubbed, and the shape of the leaf came up through it. Rubbing the leaves themselves in a hand:
“It crackles!”
Then they gathered a pile up, squeezed it into a ball, and threw it at each other.
And then sweeping — the whole floor of them.
They had asked to play with leaves, so real ones came into the room.
“This one's green.”
“This one's brown. It's massive!”
“I want to put stickers on a big one.”
So big leaves, and stickers — eyes, hearts, jewels — and thread in every colour.
“I like the shiny jewels.”
“I like the rabbit.”
The stickers that were too big, they cut down with scissors.
They wound the thread on together. “It's rainbow thread!”
Then they held up what they had made.
“Mine's an alien. Its eyes are big!”
“Mine's a goblin. It's got two eyes!”
“Mine's all rainbow colours!”
“Where's your house?”
“My house is up in a tree.”
And they started building the houses out of blocks.
The next day there were leaves out, and twigs, and pine cones, and pine needles, and boxes.
“What's this?”
“This leaf is long!”
“It's all round.”
“This leaf is hard!”
They put the lot into the boxes.
“This is the leaf duvet. It rained, so the leaf is cold.”
“This one's the pillow.”
So the leaf dolls from yesterday had a leaf duvet and a pine cone pillow and a house to be in.
“This is my leaf house. You haven't got any brown leaves — I've got loads!”
“I've got a pine cone! This one's the doll.”
Then the leaves that had been the duvet went onto two open palms, and off with a puff.
“The wind blew and it flew away!”
They brought the leaves they had picked up outside back into the room, and one of them found a hole.
“There's a hole here.”
Then a magnifying glass.
“Look, everyone — I can see tooth marks. An insect must have eaten it.”
Another one came over, took the magnifying glass, and looked at the same hole. Then put it down, fetched a loupe, and looked again.
“It looks the same through the loupe. Shall we look at a different leaf?”
A ginkgo leaf came over next.
“The ginkgo hasn't got a hole. But if you look closely it's like a heart.”
Later there was newspaper, for pressing them flat.
“This way they don't get creased. What do you want to make?”
“A mirror. It'd look good with leaves stuck on it, wouldn't it?”
That child went and got a mirror from the home corner, put leaves on the back of it, and held it up.
“Good, isn't it?”
Then took the mirror back where it came from, and carried on laying leaves between the newspaper — keeping them apart so they wouldn't stick to each other, and covering them over.
Leaf-shaped cutters came out with the coloured dough.
“The dough is soft. It squashes.”
“This one's softer.”
One of them rolled the dough out flat, put a cutter on it, and pushed.
“Is this how you do it?”
“You have to press hard or the shape doesn't come out.”
The cutter came away, and there was a leaf in the dough.
“It looks like a real one.”
“I want to do it again in another colour.”
The leaves they had pressed on Monday came out as well.
“They've gone nice and flat.”
“The colour's gone darker too, I think.”
One of them fetched paper and opened it out to go round a head, then tried the leaves on it one at a time.
“I think it'll stick here.”
“Put them along the top, like a crown.”
When there were enough on, they held it up.
“The crown's finished.”
“It does look like a real one”
They wanted a frame made out of what they had picked up — leaves, acorns, pine cones — so the materials came out, and paint too, because somebody wanted the pine cones painted.
The painted cones went together with the leaves and some sticks into the shape of a frame.
Then: the leaves shouldn't break. So an adult laminated some of them, and after that there was writing on the leaves, and birds and squirrels made out of them.
Two of them said they wanted to write a letter to autumn. They put down the shapes of the letters they knew, and asked about the words they didn't.
Somebody else was making a scarecrow — a face and eyes drawn on polystyrene, and chopsticks for the body.