Tag: leaves

Leaf Drawings

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Leaf Drawings (7)

A recent nature walk yielded up the first of fall’s changing leaves, and we knew we had to make art with them when we got home!

My original title for this post was going to be “leaf butterflies”, since when I saw all the pretty leaves, I immediately thought of little butterfly and bug wings. Travis had plans of his own, hence the more generic title of “leaf drawings.” Read on!

For the original butterfly idea, I drew a few bug bodies in crayon, and Travis helped select which leaves would be their wings.

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Liberal application with a glue stick was all we needed to attach “wings” and googly eyes to each critter.

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But Travis wanted to make his own picture with the remaining leaves, and began gluing and coloring.

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“It’s you and me in a leaf pile!” he explained proudly, showing me his first one. A second “leaf pile” work of art soon followed.

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What other drawings would you make featuring leaves from a nature walk? Please share in the comments!

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Sandpaper Leaves

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We often think of leaf crafts as projects for the autumn, but here’s one that can be done in nearly every season (except winter!). It combines a little bit of nature, a little bit of sensory art, and a little bit of coloring all in one.

After a full family day at the park, we returned home with a collection of leaves. All of them were green this time of year (late summer), but we found leaves in as many different shapes as possible, everything from nearly oval, to trefoil, to pointy.

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Once home, I traced the leaves in permanent marker on sandpaper, making sure to include lines for the veins (a quick little science lesson on how leaves drink their water!)

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Travis loved selecting colors and filling in each leaf, with the sandpaper adding extra tactile fun.

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He made some leaves true to life (oranges, greens), and went beyond nature with a few others in vibrant pinks.

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Best of all was when he grabbed a handful of crayons for a rainbow leaf – his own invention.

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Cut out the leaves and paste up on the walls or use as pretty gift cards the next time you send a loved one something special.

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We loved this variation on leaf art!

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More Fall Leaf Fun

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I posted about our Fall Find It walk a few weeks back, but now the fall colors are even more vibrant so we set off in the woods again. Forty degrees felt warm after an early arctic blast, making us doubly sure to get out into the sunshine. We added in a few suggestions from Parents magazine to add novelty to this particular walk!

First, we decided to see if we could find the whole rainbow, ROYGBIV, that is. Blue proved to be elusive, but we did wind up with this neat line-up. Finding a purple shade was a particular triumph.

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Then we searched for the biggest leaf, and kept dropping contenders whenever we spotted one that was even bigger. We were impressed to bring home this one at 9.5 inches… until reading about a record-setting maple leaf that was 20 inches!

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Perhaps the most fun suggestion was to find shapes in the leaves, similar to the game you’ve most likely played identifying shapes in the clouds, but with an eye to the ground this time. We spotted this little fellow that looked like a bat.

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I found one that I thought looked like a rooster, and Travis decided the frilly one looked like a caterpillar! All in all, some simple and good fun that I recommend for your next nature expedition. What other leaf games do you and your family play? Please share in the comments!

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Leafy Linens

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This lovely fall project would make a beautiful decoration for a Thanksgiving table, or a perfect gift for school teachers around the holidays.

The first step (as with so many of our autumnal projects it seems!) was to bring home a few treasures from a walk in the park. Look for a variety of leaf shapes, ideally flat and still quite fresh and sturdy.

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Set out the leaves, along with a foam paint brush and fabric paint – don’t use tempera paint here, since the linens will go through the wash. I gave Travis a selection of seasonable colors, such as red, green, and gold. Use neutral-colored napkins if you plan these for a holiday table. We chose to make ours onto white handkerchiefs, which will make great table centerpieces or gifts.

Paint a leaf with a foam paintbrush, ensuring you have a nice, even layer.

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Place the leaf, paint side down, on the fabric, and roll over it with a brayer or old rolling pin. This new tool was Travis’s favorite part of the project, and he eagerly rolled over each leaf.

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Carefully lift up the leaf for the big reveal – neato!

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Repeat with different leaf shapes and colors until your fabric is filled.

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Towards the end, our prints got a bit messy as the brayer itself was coated in paint, so you may want to give yours a wash or two as your work. Travis didn’t mind though, and loved mixing our paint shades.

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We plan to give these to his preschool teachers as the holidays approach!

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Leaf Paintbrush

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Wondering what to do with the leaves and other odds and ends that have blown in from your fall nature walks? Turn them into paintbrushes!

We tried out a few different methods for this fun art project. Some twigs we brought home already had multiple leaves attached, and these were ready-made brushes.

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The other option is to gather together a few leaves of the same size and shape, and secure with twine or string around a twig.

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Pine needles made a brush that looked like a mini broom!

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I set Travis up with his “brushes” and paints, and let his creativity go wild. We started out with small pieces of poster board to paint on…

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But he requested a bigger canvas, which soon had him splattering and swishing colors this way and that.

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He loved pouring out big dollops of paint and running the brush through them.

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Our verdict is that the pine needle brush definitely worked best, but all of them were fun. “Mom, is it okay if I’m messy?” he asked at one point. Embrace the chaos and say yes, and let your little artist have fun with this one! You can always wipe the paints off the floor after.

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Fall Friends

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Here’s a quirky, sweet project to compliment any fall nature walk – make a collection of the items you find, then bring them home and turn them into “friends”.

Travis loved this element to a stroll we took at a local Audubon society, delightedly filling up the bag I brought along. Although unseasonably warm weather means we didn’t find too many brightly colored leaves yet, there is no shortage of neat things to find. Big seed pods were especially a hit, as were little acorn caps, pieces of bark, and other small treasures.

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To make our friends once home, I gathered odds and ends from our craft bin – pom poms and buttons were good options for eyes.

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Ribbon and decorative tape could make smiles. Travis thought it was funny that the tape made a straight line for an “angry friend” (who actually was his favorite!) instead of a curved smile.

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Adults, you may need hot glue depending on what materials you’re working – pipe cleaner arms and legs needed the help of the hot glue gun, as did items we glued to roly-poly seed pods.

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In sum, have fun with this one. What will be the body of your friend – bark, a rock, a big leaf? The only limit is your child’s imagination!

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Fall Bucket List Part I

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Happy Autumn everyone! It’s my favorite season, and that has my head full of activities I hope to share and enjoy with Travis before the season ends. To make sense of all the ideas, what better way than to put it all on paper? This post is the first of a two-part series; the second will include images and tips from each item on our bucket list that we’ve checked off… But I wanted to make sure to post the Bucket List itself now so you can follow along on this fall journey!

I found a few suggested templates online, but none of them contained all of the items that I was anticipating, and most contained some activities that didn’t interest us. Instead, it was easy to type up the activities we wanted in a Word document, playing around with fun fonts.

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Since we don’t have a color printer, I printed the template in black and white, but this gave Travis the chance to fill it in with autumnal colors as I read off each item to get him excited about activities to come.

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“Can we do them all today?” he asked. Not quite!

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I filled in the final colors and hung the bucket list on our wall, and we can’t wait to check off the first one.

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Leaf Color Experiment

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Our autumnal fun continues! Although the science behind this experiment is advanced for toddlers, even little kids will delight in seeing how the water changes colors. For preschoolers and older kids, you can go into more detail about chlorophyll and why leaves change color in the fall.

As with our leaf glitter project, half the beauty of this activity is going out to collect your leaves. Get outside and have fun!

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Choose a variety of autumn-hued leaves, and return home to cook in boiling water for 5 minutes. Carefully use tongs (adults only!) to transfer the leaves to clear glasses or test tubes filled with rubbing alcohol.

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Let sit for at least an hour, and you’ll see the alcohol “magically” change color to match each leaf. The results will only get better after time – at the 8 hour mark, Travis was really excited to note the changes. Leave over night for the most vibrant result.

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Interestingly, our green performed the best, and our most vibrant fall orange leaf barely tinted the liquid. Even adults can be surprised by experiments!