With the fall season comes various craft ideas to get the imagination flowing. Here is a craft idea submitted by a local art educator:

Fall Leaf Rubbings

The concept of this craft is to learn organic shapes, textures and how to do a rubbing.

Materials

-Leaves

-Paper (ideally white)

-Crayons

-Pencils

Steps

First, find some fallen leaves. If the leaves are wet let them dry first. Identify the types of leaves you found. If you need help identifying the leaves, check them against examples on the “All about Trees” website, www.udel.edu/~khshum/WebSite103/treetable.html. Leaves can usually be identified by their shapes.

Organic versus geometric shapes — most people think of squares, triangles, rectangles and circles when they think of shapes. These commonly used and thought of shapes are called “geometric shapes,” but there are shapes everywhere in nature too!

The outline of a tree, dog, person or leaf would be described as an “organic shape.” Your leaves are organic shapes.

Textures — a texture is how something feels or looks like it feels. Touch a leaf where the veins are. It feels bumpy. If the leaf has just fallen other parts will feel smooth. If it is dry and crispy your leaf might feel rough. Textures you can feel are called “actual textures.” On your artwork today, you will make textures you can see instead of feel which are called “implied textures.”

Once you have identified your leaves, write your name on the back of the paper.

Those in kindergarten should write the word “Fall” in the middle of the paper. First grade students and older should write the word “Fall” in block or bubble letters to make your letters into Shapes.

For assistance in drawing bubble letters, watch “Let’s draw bubble letters Bubble Letter Alphabet Tutorial/Adding Color” on YouTube at www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhiKkJtcHJk.

For assistance in drawing block letters, watch “How to Draw Block Letters: Alphabet Tutorial” on YouTube at www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExGy4llDBZY.

Once the letters are drawn, kindergartners can trace the letters with crayons while older students can color or add designs to your Bubble or Block Letters.

You can now add leaf rubbings all around your “Fall” letters filling up the page!

To see how to do the leaf rubbing, please watch the YouTube video, “Leaf Rubbings Activity from Evan-Moor’s Skill Sharpeners: Science” at www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvegBhx8510.

After making the rubbings, trace the edges of the leaf shapes to make them show up better.

Things to think about:

-Can you find other things around you to make a texture rubbing?

-What colors did you use, and were they Fall/Warm colors?

-What can you add to the craft to make your artwork even better?

-What do you like best about your artwork?