It happens every single year. In the middle of December we find dried leaves stacked up in the books.
At first I get so excited because, well... I find something. And of course those leaves are so pretty and well preserved while drying.
But on the other hand, I catch myself biting my lip and making weird face mimics because I am not in the mood anymore to make autumn crafts with my kids when it's snowing outside.
However, we found the leaves, kids started playing with them. Let's make something out if it.
How about a piece of wall art.
Sounds artsy, isn't?
How we did dried leaves craft
Supplies we used:
- dried leaves
- tree stick
- tape
To process of making this craft is super simple:
- My daughter arranged the dried leaves on the cardboard-board the way she wanted to look on the stick. She tried to sort them by color, shape, "prettiness and ugliness".
- Got the stick, start putting leaves and securing each of them with little tape (you could use hot glue gun).
- Do this until you are out of stick space of leaves. We ran out of patience.
We turned dried leaves craft into educational activity
At first this craft looks very simple. But as any other craft or activity you make with your children there are always plenty of opportunities to expand the craft by having even more fun or by finding educational and learning gaps to be filled.
With this craft we had a chance to talk more about leaves. Specifically, the dried ones.
- How they smell
- How they feel when you touch them
- How they change the color
- How they shrink
I found interesting article about the scientific project that one scientist did with the school kids to actually write a scientific paper from the research they have done. It was about How Leaves Shrink as They Dry out.
From this article we learned that:
When leaves dry out, they shrink about 20 percent on average.
Through the experiments in the classroom, we found that a leaf comes back to its original size when we soak it in water.
And our final project which we hanged on the wall. There is always a good side to anything that you do. It's the challenge to find it.
And I think, today we did. With this dried leaves craft that we turned into wall art and kids (and myself) learned something new about dried leaves.
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