Make a leaf spotting wheel

Before you begin

• Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Take a look at our guidance to help you carry out your risk assessment, including examples.  
• Make sure all young people and adults involved in the activity know how to take part safely.
• Make sure you’ll have enough adult helpers. You may need some parents and carers to help if you’re short on helpers. 

Planning and setting up this activity

• Make sure the outdoor area you visit is accessible for everyone, choosing a suitable place for drop off and collection. You may need to think about avoiding steps or steep gradients or including frequent breaks. 
• Check the forecast and sunset times, but be prepared for the weather to change. It’s best to run this activity on lighter evenings, such as in summer.
• Make sure everyone knows where and when to meet, knows what to bring and comes dressed for the weather and the task. People should wear outdoor clothing and sturdy shoes. 
• It might be a good idea to have some spare equipment, such as gardening gloves, for those who’d prefer not to get their hands too dirty. Make sure there’s somewhere everyone can wash their hands after the activity too.
• Find a wood that has a variety of trees – try to make sure that there are at least some trees that are on the leaf spotter sheet.
• Print enough copies of the Leaf hunt sheet, so that each group has one between them. Alternatively, find or make your own sheets, or use an app such as the Woodland Trust Tree ID app.

Make a leaf spotting wheel

1. Gather everyone together and ask if anyone knows any tree species and what their leaves look like. 
2. Ask everyone how they can tell leaves apart how they’d recognise this tree or leaf again without any help. They should look at the shapes, colours and textures of the leaves. People could also look at the veins and markings visible on the leaves. Some are single leaves, such as oak leaves, while some are multiple, such as rowan leaves too. Next, look at the tree that the leaf’s growing on. They could look at the seeds, the size, what the bark is like, or whether the tree is in the sun or the shade.
3. Explain that you’ll be making a leaf spotting wheel to help people practice identifying different leaves.
4. Give everyone a paper plate and ask people to divide into equal segments. You can use a ruler and pen to help divide it into four, eight or more segments. 
5. Each person should then take a peg for each segment and peg it onto the plate.
6. In each segment, people should write down the name of a leaf from the leaf spotting sheet. They’ll be looking for those leaves, then pegging them to the plate when they’ve found them.
7. To make it easier, people could also colour each segment a different autumnal (such as orange, yellow and brown) or green colour, rather than writing the name of a leaf. They’ll be pegging a leaf of the same colour to the plate when they’ve found them.

Find the leaves

1. Meet at or head out to the outdoor space or meet at the chosen venue. Explain the boundaries of the playing area and where the no-go zones are. 
2. Everyone should get into small groups, with at least two adults for each group. If playing in a public space, young people should be paired up so no young person is left alone and they should run or move together.
3. When everyone’s ready, each group should explore the wood and try to spot all of the leaves or colour on their plate. Give each group a copy of the 'Leaf hunt' sheet, which will make it easier to spot the leaves.
4. When they come across a leaf, the group need to identify it. Remind everyone not to pick any leaves, as the trees need them, but to pick them up off the ground.
5. When a group finds a leaf that matches to one they’ve got on their plate, they should peg that leaf to the plate. 
6. After a set time, or after one group finds all of their leaves, gather back together. People who are happy to could talk about and show others what they found. 

Play a quick leaf matching game

1. Once a group has pegged all the leaves to the plate, gather everyone together and play a game.
2. An adult should call out the name of a tree, such as oak, and everyone should move to stand by that type of tree.
3. The adult should make sure they can see the tree they call, and everyone should remember not to move out of sight.
4. Groups should keep playing, as their adult calls out different trees.
5. If the group is struggling, they could give clues, for example, ‘an oak tree, the tree that also makes acorns’ or ‘a holly bush, that has prickly leaves that remind us of Christmas’.