Crafting with Leaves

In an attempt to integrate the multitude of fallen leaves into our crafting, I picked up a few on my way home with the girls to use in a craft.

Things you'll need:
 - Leaves (recently fallen so they won't crumble)
 - Different paint colors
 - Paintbrush(es)
 - Paper
 - Crayons
 
The first thing we tried was your typical leaf rub by placing a leaf under a piece of paper and then rubbing the side of a crayon on the paper over top of where the leaf is under the paper.  This picks up the veins and stem of the leaf showing up darker with color.  Emma had much more success with this than Alex who quickly stopped paying attention, so we moved on!

My next idea was to use the leaves as stamps.  The girls painted one side of a leaf of their choice and then pressed the painted side down onto the paper pushing with their hands on the leaf and then picking it up by the stem.  This again was much easier for Emma and she got really creative with it and made a flower out of the leaf prints which is the first picture you see in this post and below is a picture of the work in progress.

Alexandria is much more of a 'paint my hand and stamp' kind of painter with all of the hand crafts we've done, so she proceeded to move on to that while I tried to get Emma to use the leaves as paint brushes by dipping the edges into paint and then using them as a brush on the paper (below is a picture of Emma leaf painting).  Long story short, a bunch of different ideas and the best one that came out was the stamps.  All in all it was a great time with some natural items incorporated; a great way to keep using the leaves in different ways to keep your children's interest.

 ...wonder if the tongue sticking out helps? :)