Leaf Puzzle

As part of our Fall Unit Study on Leaves, I decided to do some coloring pages, that we would make into a lap book.  One of which was a mosaic 'color by number' style worksheet. The child is to color the dotted mosaics green, and the blank mosaic's blue. I glued each worksheet to a piece of green construction paper and set out a small jar of green and blue crayons to complete the project.

I thought this would be a great project on several levels. The first being the opportunity to practice following instructions. The second being, taking a structured approach to coloring, something we normally don't do.

The project didn't go over that well, and I had to scale back my lesson plan, which was to do this every day for a week, to have them really master the coloring and instruction, then use this as a practice page, then eventual page of our lap book. I even thought about making one to cut into puzzles pieces!

The first wrong turn came about when the glue didn't fully dry on the worksheets when we were ready to start.  My oldest twins paper was the worst and tore in several places which you will see below. Also, they only gave the project a go two days, and that was after a lot of prodding. They just were not interested. I plan to reintroduce it again soon.

Here is my oldest twin fighting with his soggy paper. Masha' Allah, he got the concept pretty quickly, but was a little grossed out by the wet glue.

My middle son is 2. He participates in lessons at will. This was not one of those days.

This is my youngest twins paper.  Part of the instructions were to 'color the circles green.' I'm not sure what he took it to mean, but he circled all the dots, and declared the project done, lol. I had to really work with him to make him understand he needed to color in the leaves, not just circle the dots.

He would not color in the blank mosaics at all. I think you can faintly see a blue dot on the bottom of one of them. 

As I said I wanted to do this over the entire week, and had the station set up at the breakfast table so they would get into it first thing. They groaned when they saw it, but I tried to work with them. This is my dot circlers second day page. Masha' Allah, marked improvement.

This is my oldest twins second day page. I wish they would've tried more days, but it was clear, this project was done.

Close up of our soggy paper. I'm not a fan of glue sticks, so I think next time we will color first, then glue.