Autumn is such a great time of year for nature inspired crafts and learning. The world is full of so many gorgeous colors and the weather is perfect for getting outside and exploring. Here are a few of our favorite autumn themed crafts and learning activities:
We have done lots of leaf rubbings and lots of water color resist art in the past, but we've never tried them together until this year. I love the way these turned out and they were so much fun to make!
All you need for this craft is a few fresh leaves, white paper, crayons, watercolors, and a paintbrush.
We went for a short nature walk in a quiet neighborhood near our apartment and collected a variety of leaves to use.
Start by placing a leaf under your paper and rub the side of a crayon over the paper where the leaf is positioned, just like a typical leaf rubbing. Bright colors like orange, yellow, and pink work best for this project.
Continue adding more leaves to your paper until you are happy with how it looks. Then paint over your paper with watercolors. The darker the color and shade of paint, the more your leaves will pop against the background.
Leaf Art Placemats
We often make nature art out of leaves, rocks, dandelions, and other nature treasures my kids find. Usually we just make them outdoors somewhere, take a picture, and leave them for someone else to find. This time I wanted to find a way to preserve our artwork for a little bit, so we decided to try making placemats with contact paper. They turned out really great and my girls had a blast making them.
For this craft you will need some pressed leaves, construction paper, and contact paper.
Collect some pretty fall leaves and press them inside a heavy book or a flower press. Then use them to create art on construction paper.
Once you've come up with some sort of design or picture that you like, carefully cover both sides with clear contact paper.
Melted Crayon Autumn Tree Craft
These come out really pretty and my kids loved making them!
For this craft you will need a piece of white construction paper, a brown marker or colored pencil, crayons in fall colors, a crayon sharpener, a blow dryer, and waxed paper.
Start by sketching a tree trunk and branches onto a piece of construction paper with the brown marker or pencil. Then use the crayon sharpener and crayons to make lots of crayon shavings.
Sprinkle the crayon shavings over the parts of the branches where leaves should be. (You can put the shavings into old glitter or spice shakers instead of sprinkling with your fingers if you want.)
Peel of the wax paper and check out your beautiful autumn tree!
More Fun Autumn Activities
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Autumn Leaf Math
Count and Sort Leaves
Take a nature walk around your neighborhood or yard and collect some autumn leaves. Then have your child sort and count them. Try sorting them in different ways like by color, by leaf type, by size, etc...
Make a Graph
Collect some different types of autumn leaves and then sort them either by species or color. Make a graph showing the amounts of different types of leaves that you collected.
Leaf Symmetry Activity
Find a large leaf and carefully cut it in half, down one side of the center vein. Set one half onto a piece of paper and challenge your child to draw the missing half.
Autumn Leaf Science
Autumn Leaf Color Extraction Activity
I love this one because the results are really beautiful! With just a few simple household items you can extract those beautiful fall pigments out of leaves.
For this activity you need some fall leaves in various colors (you'll want 5-10 of each type of leaf), rubbing alcohol or strong clear grain alcohol, and some clear mason jars.
Start by boiling the leaves in a pot of water on the stove for about two minutes. Then remove the leaves and place them into mason jars. Separate different types of leaves into different mason jars.
Fill the jars about 3/4 of the way with alcohol and put on the lids. Then just set them aside. After a couple days, strain out the leaves and pour the alcohol back into the jar. Some of the leave's color should have transferred to the alcohol!
For this activity you need some fall leaves in various colors (you'll want 5-10 of each type of leaf), rubbing alcohol or strong clear grain alcohol, and some clear mason jars.
Start by boiling the leaves in a pot of water on the stove for about two minutes. Then remove the leaves and place them into mason jars. Separate different types of leaves into different mason jars.
Fill the jars about 3/4 of the way with alcohol and put on the lids. Then just set them aside. After a couple days, strain out the leaves and pour the alcohol back into the jar. Some of the leave's color should have transferred to the alcohol!
Leaf Chromatography
You can separate the different pigments in fall leaves using a simple paper chromatography process.
For this activity you will need:
-Fresh leaves, try some that have changed to their fall colors and a green leaf or two.
-Fresh leaves, try some that have changed to their fall colors and a green leaf or two.
-Several small cups (one for each leaf)
-A spoon
-Rubbing alcohol
-White coffee filters
-A large glass baking dish
-A spoon
-Rubbing alcohol
-White coffee filters
-A large glass baking dish
Tear a leaf into small pieces and place it in one of the small cups. Mash it up a bit with the back of a spoon, to release the fluids inside. Repeat with the other leaves.
Add a few tablespoons of rubbing alcohol to each cup. Then set the cups inside the glass baking dish. Pour hot water into the baking dish. Don't pour water into the individual cups though.
Set the whole thing aside for several hours or overnight, until the alcohol begins to look a little colored.
Cut a white coffee filter into strips about an inch wide. Set one end of a strip into each cup and drape the rest of the coffee filter strip over the edge of the glass.
Watch as the liquid is absorbed up the coffee filter strip and the pigments separate from each other. Once the liquid has traveled all the way up the strips, remove them from the cups and set them aside to dry.
You will notice that most of the leaves actually contained more than one pigment, which you will see as different colored bands on the coffee filter strips.
You can learn more about paper chromatography and how it works here: Fun with Chromatography!
Fall Leaf Inspired Writing Activities
Fall Leaf Descriptive Writing
Take a short nature walk to collect some fall leaves. Have your child choose their favorite and challenge them to write a description of it with as much detail as possible.
Fall Leaf Acrostic Poem
Spell out "Fall Leaves" down the left hand side of a page and have your child write a fall themed poem using each letter as the beginning of a line in their poem.
Fall Leaf Crafts
Tissue Paper Leaf Lanterns
For this craft you will need:
-A balloon
-White tissue paper cut into squares about 2 inches x 2 inches
-A 50:50 mixture of school glue and water
- A paint brush or sponge
-Fresh leaves (or flowers work nicely too)
-A flameless tea light candle
Lay tissue paper squares over about two thirds of a balloon (leave a large opening around the balloon stem to be the open portion of the lantern) while coating them with a mixture of school glue and water. Apply the mixture with a paint brush or a sponge.
Then add some leaves and flowers- we just used fresh ones from our backyard, but pressed leaves and flowers would work great too.
Add a couple more layers of tissue paper and glue water, and then set it aside to dry.
Once dry, pop the balloon (sometimes the tissue paper crunches up a bit when you do this, but once you completely remove the balloon pieces from inside, you can just round it back out with your hand).
If you want to add a handle, punch a couple holes near the top and thread through some yarn or cord.
Then just stick a flameless tea light candle inside and you have a really beautiful lantern!
Water Color Resist Leaf Rubbings
All you need for this craft is a few fresh leaves, white paper, crayons, watercolors, and a paintbrush.
We went for a short nature walk in a quiet neighborhood near our apartment and collected a variety of leaves to use.
Start by placing a leaf under your paper and rub the side of a crayon over the paper where the leaf is positioned, just like a typical leaf rubbing. Bright colors like orange, yellow, and pink work best for this project.
Continue adding more leaves to your paper until you are happy with how it looks. Then paint over your paper with watercolors. The darker the color and shade of paint, the more your leaves will pop against the background.
We often make nature art out of leaves, rocks, dandelions, and other nature treasures my kids find. Usually we just make them outdoors somewhere, take a picture, and leave them for someone else to find. This time I wanted to find a way to preserve our artwork for a little bit, so we decided to try making placemats with contact paper. They turned out really great and my girls had a blast making them.
For this craft you will need some pressed leaves, construction paper, and contact paper.
Collect some pretty fall leaves and press them inside a heavy book or a flower press. Then use them to create art on construction paper.
Once you've come up with some sort of design or picture that you like, carefully cover both sides with clear contact paper.
These come out really pretty and my kids loved making them!
For this craft you will need a piece of white construction paper, a brown marker or colored pencil, crayons in fall colors, a crayon sharpener, a blow dryer, and waxed paper.
Start by sketching a tree trunk and branches onto a piece of construction paper with the brown marker or pencil. Then use the crayon sharpener and crayons to make lots of crayon shavings.
Sprinkle the crayon shavings over the parts of the branches where leaves should be. (You can put the shavings into old glitter or spice shakers instead of sprinkling with your fingers if you want.)
Carefully lay a piece of waxed paper, waxy side down over your art. Run a hot iron over the waxed paper until the crayon shreds melt.
Peel of the wax paper and check out your beautiful autumn tree!
Autumn Leaf Salt Dough Impressions
For this activity you will need:
-Leaves, ones with large veins work best
-Flour
-Salt
-Water
-A rolling pin
-Colored pencils
-A large round cookie cutter or round jar lid
Start by collecting some leaves. Smaller leaves with big veins that protrude from the leaf work best.
Next prepare your salt dough. Mix 2 cups of flour and a cup of salt. Then slowly add water until a workable dough forms. It will be somewhere around a cup of water.
Flour a work surface and roll out the dough about a quarter inch thick. Cut out several circles using the cookie cutter or jar lid.
Place a leaf on a circle of dough, vein side down. Apply pressure over the leaf, paying special attention along the edges and veins.
Peel up the leaf and you should be left with an impression in the dough. Repeat with the other circles and leaves. Then set your salt dough leaf impressions aside to dry. It takes about a week for them to fully air dry, or you can dry them in the oven. Bake them on a baking sheet at 250 degrees farenheit for about 2 hours.
When your leaf impressions are dry you can add some color with colored pencils.
(The ones that look like roses in the photo below were made with pine cones)
Leaf Printing
This one is simple, just collect some leaves- preferably fairly fresh leaves, if they're too dry they will crumble. Paint them lightly, vein side up, with washable paints and then stamp them onto paper.
Autumn Leaf Bookmarks
For this activity you will need:
-Leaves
-Clear contact Paper
-Waxed Paper
Collect some small sized leaves. Choose leaves that are still fresh, rather than dry and withered.
Set them in a single layer between two pieces of waxed paper and then carefully set it in the middle of a heavy book and set it aside for about a week. Then your leaves should be dry and pressed and ready to use.
Cut two identical rectangles 1-2 inches wide and 4-5 inches tall.
Peel the back off of one of the pieces of contact paper and set it on your work surface, sticky side up.
Arrange your leaves onto the contact paper. Peel the other piece of contact paper and carefully line it up and stick it on top of the other piece, sandwiching the leaves inside. Now your bookmark is ready to use.
For more detailed bookmark instructions check out this post: Pressed Nature Bookmarks.
Videos About Fall Leaves
-Why Do Leaves Change Color in the Fall? from SciShow Kids
-Why Do Leaves Change Color? What Makes the Leaves Fall? from FreeSchool
-Why Do Leaves Change Color and Fall? from SciShow
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