The weather is changing and the leafs are falling, a perfect opportunity for some cross-curricular learning. Many of these can work out well on the first day of art class. Here are 5 fun leaf art projects to get your kids running around outside, exploring their environments and getting creative with their findings.
1. Assemblage Collage
I took my Year 2 class out on a leaf hunt to collect a few leaves. They were to collect 2-4 pairs of leaves that could be ‘twins’.
They absolutely loved going outside and showing me all the leaves they found. Before we sat down to start making, I read them the story of The Very Hungry Caterpillar to give them a fun way to look at where butterflies come from. Then they arranged their leaf findings on card stock in the shape of a butterfly. With this creative project, I introduced the meaning of the word Symmetry. I love sliding in some new vocab!
2. Water colour & Oil Pastels
For this particular project, I sent my Year 3 class outdoors to collect 3 different types of leaves.
They came back and traced around the leaves onto card stock and cut out the shapes.
They used these shapes as templates to draw random leaf shapes all over the 12″x 18″ page.
I gave them some oil pastels and crayons to draw and colour their leave projects.
Once they were satisfied with their designs they used watercolour paint to finish it off. The wax crayons and oil pastels will resist the watercolour paint, and ensue a load of “oohs” and “ahhs” from the children. I love how these turned out. Don’t you?
3. Chalk Smudge
My Year 4 class got to use chalk to create beautiful leaf silhouettes. Similar to the Year 3 group, they gathered leaves which where to be traced around on card stock and it cut out to make a leaf stencil.
They just ran chalk on the outer edge of their card stock cut-outs with coloured chalk and then with a finger smudged outwardly on the page creating a rather unique soft blown look.
4. Drawing Patterns
I like to test out projects with different age groups, so I approached the above Year 3 leaf art project with my Year 5 class but approached it a little differently.
This time, we used a lot more crayons and were embellishing designs with coloured pencils and felt tip pens to create the stems and veins of the leaf.
They used acrylic paint to accent their designs instead of watercolour like we did with Year 3.
5. Leaf Relief with Foil & Acrylic
My Year 6 group created these beautiful leaf reliefs with just foil and acrylic paint.
I took them out on a leave hunt, they were to pick up a few flat and broad leaves.
We glued them flat down onto some card board, covered the entire thing with glue and carefully placed foil over the top.
Burnishing with felt (or fabric) squares worked great to bring out the textures of the leaves.
We sponge painted the foil with black acrylic and let it dry.
Once dried, I cut up kitchen sponges, the kind with the green brillo pad on the bottom and cut them up into little squares.
We used that brillo patch to gently scrub over the leave imprints.
The results were fantastic! Some kids scrubbed a bit too hard and tore the foil, exposing the leaf… So emphasise the word gently.
