Fall Themed Projects For Kids
Fall is one of the best seasons for making art! The colors are vibrant and art materials are literally dropping all around. For this week, we’re doing some of our favorites like - painting with acorns and creating leaf creatures — as well as trying out a few new projects. See another post about leaf projects here.
Leaf Printmaking With Kids
What you’ll need:
Crayola Washable Paint in fun, bright colors
Paintbrushes
Leaves
Tray, paper, paint cups (we love this one by Melissa and Doug)
1. Paint the backside of a leaf with paint.
2. Stamp your leaf down on your paper revealing fun patterns underneath. Continue stamping with different colors and different shaped leaves until your whole paper is covered. Don’t be afraid to layer up and print leaves on top of each other.
*Optional: Use a marker, colored pencil or the stem of a leaf to go in and add additional marks/patterns on your artwork.
Mixed Media Leaf Collage
What You’ll Need:
Collage Paper (scrapbooking pieces, recycled paper, construction paper, etc.)
Leaf templates
Glue sticks
Scissors
Pencils
Pick out fun patterned paper- use construction paper, old scrapbook paper scraps and painted paper. Pick colors that go well together.
Sketch leaves on the patterned collage paper. Cut them out.
Sketch leaves on your paper using Kwik Stix.
Arrange your cut out leaves on top of the colored leaves. Glue them down using a glue stick.
Fall Animals Collage
We love collaging with recycled painted paper at the studio. We save all unwanted paintings and all paper scraps for projects just like this. Both of these projects can be made from drawing/cutting really simple shapes. Also check out our “Forest Animals” themed projects here.
What You’ll Need:
Collage Paper
Pencil/Eraser
Glue Sticks
Scissors
Construction Paper
Using a pencil, sketch out the large, simple animal shapes on a piece of recycled paper - head, body, ears, tail, etc. Cut them out.
Arrange the shapes on a piece of construction paper and glue them down using a glue stick. We love glue sticks by Crayola because they glide really easy and the blue tint helps show kids where they’ve applied glue.
Layer in the details such as eyes, stripes, ears, etc. using cut paper.
Drawing Patterns
Fill in fall motifs like acorns and leafs with fun patterns - polka dots, cross hatch lines, stripes, dashes, etc. Use a variety of drawing materials such as markers, crayons and colored pencils. One of our favorite coloring materials are Crayola Twistable Crayons. The colors are so bright!
Painting With Acorns
We’ve done this process based activity at the studio with all kinds of things - marbles, water beads, jingle bells and now acorns.
What You’ll Need:
Acorns
Large tray or tub with high sides
Paper
1. Place several acorns inside of your tray or tub. Place your paper in the tub.
2. Squirt paint along the edges. Make sure to use colors that will blend well together (such as red and yellow) - otherwise you’ll end up with a brown color!
3. Shake the tub around so the acorns roll through the paint and all across the paper.
Storytime & Craft Activity - Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert
This week, we read Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert and then made our own leaf creatures using leaves found outside. We first glued the leaves down using regular washable Elmer’s glue. We then sealed the leaves using Glossy Mod Podge. This helps seal and preserve the fall colors.
