Remember doing Leaf Rubbings in the Fall when you were a kid? Well, Autumn is here again and its time for a nature walk to collect some leaves for this wonderful classic nature craft.
On your nature walk give the children (even young toddlers) a paper bag or large zip lock to collect their treasures.
Just in case they should ask the question…. Why do the leaves change color and fall off the trees?
Here is a quick answer….The leaves collect sunlight to feed the tree in the spring and summer. During the fall the tree goes into resting mode for the Winter. So the leaves turning color is the their way of getting ready for Winter.
There is much more to learn about it but that is the toddler explanation. If the kids are older why not do a research project to learn more. It’s quite interesting. For example, an oak tree’s leaves turn brown for a different reason then a maple tree’s leaves turning red. Chlorophyll and photosynthesis, glucose, oxygen and carbon dioxide-there is a whole factory in every tree we haven’t even noticed. Have a read through this website for a little lesson my 8 year old could handle..
https://www.sciencemadesimple.com/leaves.html
For this project you will need:
- Crayons…green, brown, orange, red, yellow
- Leaves
- Plain paper
Grab your crayons and paper and leaves. Peel the paper off your green, brown, orange and red crayons.
We have a nice collection of treasures from our nature hike-including stones, sticks and petals from my mums. For today’s project we just used the larger leaves. I’m setting the rest of the little treasures aside for another project.
Take your leaf and turn it face down. Lay a blank page on top of the leaf. Turn your crayon on its side and rub on the leaf.
Yellow was one of my favorite colors to do rubbing but it doesn’t show up quite as well on photos.
On this one we tried to layer red after the yellow but the leaf had moved a bit. It still looks cool though.
Were you able to collect a variety of leaves? If the weather didn’t work out for a proper nature hike in the woods, look around your yard and take a leaf sample of nearby shrubs and garden plants. They definitely have interesting leaves worth doing a leaf rubbing with too.
Here we tried all the crayon colors on each leaf.
For this lovely art piece, we used only one colour on the leaf and then moved the leaf over and tried the next colour.
This is such a quick and easy autumn activity-it could be part of a yearly autumn tradition. If you have little ones in your life, I hope you can find a few moments to enjoy the Autumn changes of season and make some Fall art together.
Check out this post for a great nature craft using inexpensive clay!
Nature Craft – Perfect for Earth Day Activity – Clay Imprints with Plants and Flowers
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