We’re into October already! Wow, did Fall sneak up on you like it did me?? One thing that we all seem to talk about in the Fall (or Autumn) is the beautiful colors of the leaves! This year it seems like the leaves have been slower to change colors, but here in Ohio they have finally gotten started and some of them are gorgeous colors! So let’s do a fun activity with the colorful leaves that are falling all around us. Fall leaves are only here for a little while before they vanish away for the season. But what if we drew and colored our own beautiful leaves that we can keep for as long as we like?
Go on a little treasure hunt outside and see if you can find 3 or 4 pretty colored leaves to bring inside with you. If you can find some that are different shapes and different colors, it will make your picture even more fun. Here are the ones I picked up:
Find a plain piece of paper and a pencil. Trace around each leaf. Just a rough tracing is fine. You can fix the lines a little if you want to after you trace it.
Depending on the age of the children doing this project how many details you will want to add to the drawing of each leaf. For young children, go ahead and let them color in the outline in the same colors as the leaf they picked. For older kids, you can add more details like the veins seen in the leaves and the stem.
Now is the time to add your beautiful colors! One suggestion I have is that you can use more than one color to achieve just the right color you are looking for. I used colored pencils for mine. Older kids might also like to identify the tree that the leaf came from. These 2 leaves are from a Maple tree.
The leaf on the left is from our Apple tree and the leaf on the right is from a bush that I don’t actually know what kind it is. Haha!
And the last leaf is from an Oak tree. The leaves of the Oak tree haven’t changed colors yet, but I like that it has a different shape to it’s leaves, so I used a green leaf.
Don’t stress over it if the color of your leaves is a bit different from the real leaves. It doesn’t matter because leaves turn so many beautiful colors that somewhere there is probably a leaf that matches the one you made. 🙂
And there you are! You have a great drawing of some beautiful leaves you can keep to remind you of Fall. Maybe you could even share your picture with someone else to make their day happier. Someone that isn’t able to get outside much would probably love to see your beautiful Autumn leaves! Have fun!
The Kids Niche 