The Collector of Many Things

I work with an adorable boy who finds joy in collecting things. Over the years he has collected many things such as puppets, animal toy figures, grass, snails, crumbs, and more. His most recent collection began last fall. He started collecting leaves. When he started it was cute he would bring one special leaf into the house and place it on the windowsill. Slowly that one turned into 2...10...20...50... you get the idea. Pretty soon he had a heaping pile of leaves. These leaves were his collection and he placed each one in a very specific location. I liked to think of this as a form of "art." The "leaf closet" as he liked to call it remained in that window for months. His sweet mom let him keep this by her dinning table window because he loved his collection so much. Now that spring has arrived his mom was trying to get rid of the dried up leaves however he was very attached. Last week I was working with him at the dinning room table and I talked about how much fun it would be to watch the leaves blow away in the wind. He said, "I could do that" He jumped up and took out just a few leaves. I asked him if it would be alright to let all the leaves blow away in the wind. He agreed and we took the entire leaf closet outside. Of course, my luck the wind stopped blowing, but thank goodness for his mom because she pulled out the leaf blower and we said "goodbye" to the leaves. This showed, so much trust and growth in this child. I am proud of him. He still would like to collect leaves but we have turned this into a more manageable project. He selects one special leaf, writes where he found the leaf, and then glues it all on a colorful piece of paper which has been laminated. Some pages even have a picture of him with the tree where he found the leaf. This has been a great way for him to work on showing restraint by only selecting one leaf. He is working on handwriting. He has started to learn the trees names and parts of plants. Now he has the fun book that he can look back through with pages of special leaves.