Threading with Leaves ~ Simple Cost Effective Crafting!

We had a visit to a lovely park this week and managed to come home with a great collection of leaves. I had previously seen a wonderful post on threading with leaves from A Little Learning for Two and decided we would have a go too!

We used:
Leaves
Curling Ribbon (I seem to have an abundance of this!)
Child friendly Needles 
Scissors

We started by removing all the leaves from the twigs we had collected. 

I cut off lengths of curling ribbon and tied a knot at the end to prevent the leaves from all slipping off and attached the child friendly needle at the other.

We then got busy threading, the needles pushed through the leaves quiet easily and is great for fine motor development and hand eye coordination. We used eucalyptus leaves so there was also a lovely scent when the leaves were pierced.

Once we had enough threading I tied the ribbons off to make a necklace. This is Master E with his beautiful necklace.

A very proud Miss M showing off her necklace.

We had lots of fun with this one and it was soooo easy and very cost effective too. Next time we might add some flowers into the mix!

Printing with Leaves and some simple Colour Mixing

We had a visit to our local community farm this week where we came across some amazing leaves. I love crafting with natural items and things that don't cost too much (especially when you are crafting every other day!). So today we did some leaf printing, it is super easy and very effective.

Here is what we started with, large leaves (I have no idea what type they are, but they had predominant veins which were great for printing), paint brushes, A3 paper (we just used copy paper) and poster paint in primary colours.

We painted the leaves vein side up using paint brushes and primary coloured paints.

Turned the leaves over and pressed them down onto the paper like a stamp to create the prints. 

Miss M making her first print.

Miss L covering her leaf with plenty of paint ready to print.

Master J very meticulous with the covering of his leaf.

Miss A being sure to press her leaf down firmly.

Miss L sneaky a peak at her print.

Miss A creating a great print.

Sticking to the primary colours made for lots of talk about colour mixing, we ended up with some purple, green and orange all made by experimenting!

Loving Master J's concentrating tongue. While he mixes up some green.

Master E working on some colour mixing and working out the red and yellow make orange.

Miss G working out that blue and yellow make green.

Miss O mixing up some purple.

One of our very clear prints.

A gorgeous example of some overlapping leaf printing, using yellow and blue to create green.



These prints turned out really well and look great. It was very simple and relatively mess free considering it was paint! We had lots of great discussions about colour mixing and the kids very proud of their works of art.
I think we will be on the hunt for some more leaves to try soon.