Painting leaves - four autumn activities with leaves

As autumn has arrived we started to collect leaves every time we went somewhere. We were talking about the gorgeous colours of autumn leaves like orange, yellow, brown or red. We also observe the different shapes like circular, heart-shaped, hand-shaped as well as their edges (smooth, wavy, toothed).

I checked this image from the net to make sure I do not say anything silly.

Leaf rubbing gave us the chance to have a look at the veins:

Leaf prints

Then we had painting fun. E. chose the colours (I tried to direct her to the autumn colours with little success) and we painted the backside of the leaves and made prints. At first, we used too much paint, but then we could observe the beautiful prints the veins and the edges gave out.

First try

Second try with less paint

Another painting activity- outine of leaves:

I pressed some leaves and stuck them on a white sheet of paper with the help of small pieces of Cello-tape. Then we painted the leaves over creating an outline. This was a hit with E.

And finally a counting game with leaves:

I drew these bare trees for E. It can serve as a simple counting activity. Your child needs to stick as many leaves on the tree as the number shows.

I've prepared printable trees you can download at the end of this post.

As simple counting is not a challenge for E. any more I thought skip counting would raise her interest much more. And I was right. 

Although it was a little too long an activity, she managed to finish it after my encouragement and help with the gluing. 

Gluing

Adding the leaves

creating a leaf face with the glue

Mommy, this leaf is ill

There are not enough branches for 8 leaves, Mommy

Placing the magnetic numbers - finished!

First, I pressed all the leaves. It's easier to work with them. Then I presented, showed and explained what to do with instructions like these:

• Hold your paper down with one hand and rub with the other hand. 
• Let's mix 2 colours.
• Paint the backside of the leaf, like this.
• You can add more glue this time because this leaf is big.

Finally, we displayed everything on our living room doors. E. shows her pieces of artwork to whoever comes to us.

And here on this link you can download the bare trees with numbers:

Autumn leaves - counting and sticking