Making leaf crafts

Crafts made from dry and fresh autumn leaves are so simple to perform that kids from the younger group aged 3-4 years old or elementary school students can cope with them. And for such crafts, leaves of any tree are suitable: oak, maple, ash, and birch. And what kind of crafts can be made for kindergartners and elementary school students from natural material, we will tell below.

Before making do-it-yourself crafts from autumn foliage and flowers, you need to devote time to preparing the necessary material. The foliage is required to be collected, and it does not matter from which tree it will be: oak, maple, and others will do. Note that preference should be given to the most beautiful yellow leaves. After harvesting, the leaves must be cleaned of possible dirt or soil residues. After that, they must be dried and the "legs" cut off.

However, the last two steps are not necessary: ​​the craft can be quite made from fresh foliage. But if you decide to give preference to dry leaves, then there are two options for drying them. The first and fastest of these is ironing. Before this procedure, the leaves must be carefully wiped with a damp, but not too wet cloth.

After cleaning the leaves with a rag, place the sheets of paper on the ironing board. But if you use an old newspaper as paper, then there is a high risk that the paint will simply be imprinted on the pieces of paper, which will ruin their appearance. On top of the paper, you need to lay out the leaves, which need to be covered with another layer.Next, you need to warm up the iron by turning it on to the minimum temperature, if it has high power. Otherwise, we recommend heating it to medium temperature. But the maximum temperature for drying will be superfluous: it will only spoil the foliage.

Wait for the iron to warm up, then start ironing the leaves. It is necessary to iron them thoroughly and on both sides, not forgetting to cover them with paper in front of this. You will need to repeat this entire process several times until the leaves are completely dry. After that, they need to be removed to a safe place, for example, in a thick book. The second option for preparing dry foliage for crafts can be called traditional, but it differs in its duration.

There are several interesting variations of crafts available to toddlers.

As a rule, the smallest ones make paintings from leaves: children from the younger groups of the kindergarten, and sometimes also students of the 1st grade. As a rule, such crafts are often brought to exhibitions, the theme of which is autumn. So, you can do crafts in the form of a hedgehog. For it, you will need the following materials: plasticine of two colors (black and beige), cardboard, PVA glue, a simple pencil and leaves directly. The workflow is quite simple. To begin with, you need to outline the contours of the future hedgehog on cardboard: the muzzle, paws and thorns. It is not worth making a detailed drawing, it is enough just to outline the main lines with a simple pencil, which will help to correctly place the animal on the sheet in terms of the composition.

Next, let's proceed to the execution of the muzzle. It needs to be made from a piece of beige plasticine. If there is no such color, then it is allowed to take white or yellow. We roll a small ball from a piece of plasticine, pull it out a little and flatten it with our fingers, after which we attach this part to the paper in the right place. Three small balls need to be rolled out of black plasticine: these will be the eyes and the hedgehog's nose. We also attach them to the right place on a cardboard sheet. If desired, legs can be made in the same way for a hedgehog.

You can do without sculpting. In this case, the body, eyes and legs of the hedgehog will either need to be cut out of cardboard or drawn... Now let's start creating hedgehog thorns. To do this, we select the leaves that are most beautiful in your opinion and place them on cardboard in order to roughly outline their location. Now we glue the leaves with PVA glue.

The autumn hedgehog is ready! If desired, the craft can be supplemented with a variety of plasticine elements: for example, make apples or mushrooms by placing them in the area of ​​hedgehog thorns, draw a clearing, trees or clouds with felt-tip pens.

There are other options for creating autumn crafts from natural materials. So, in a similar way you can do a hare, a fox, a leaf fall, a cockerel, a squirrel, or even a whole autumn forest. It is enough just to outline the location of the conceived elements on a sheet of paper and pick up suitable pieces of paper.

An equally original and at the same time easy for children option for autumn crafts will be aquarium with fish... To create such an applique, you will need autumn leaves, a sheet of A4 paper, compasses, watercolors and brushes or colored pencils, scissors, plastic eyes, as well as glue and cardboard. Getting the job done is effortless... First you need to draw a circle on a piece of paper using a compass and cut it out. After that, we cut off a small part of the resulting workpiece, stepping back from the edge literally a centimeter and a half or more, depending on the diameter of your circle. Now we paint the resulting part in blue and glue it to the cardboard: this will be the aquarium for future fish.

Now we are making the fish themselves.To do this, we select the leaves that are most suitable in your opinion. Note that there should be several of them, because it will be necessary to make not only the body, but also the tail and fin of the fish. After gluing all these elements to a cardboard sheet, we attach a plastic eye. We recommend using a hot glue gun to keep it secure, but the child will need parental help in this case. The craft is ready!

The creation of voluminous crafts is a more complex process that requires time, patience, and painstaking work. In a similar way, you can make literally any craft, but we will figure out how you can make roses from autumn leaves step by step. To work, you need maple leaves of different sizes and approximately the same color scheme. The last factor is especially important if you plan to make a whole bouquet: this way it will turn out to be more harmonious. To create one rose, you need to take the smallest maple leaf and fold it in half. This must be done with great care so that cracks do not appear, which can ruin the whole flower as a result. After that, the leaf must be rolled into a tube, thus forming the middle of the flower.

Now you need to take a larger piece of paper, fold it in half and wrap it around the middle, while bending its corners outward to form petals. This can be done several times: the more layers there are, the more magnificent the pink bud will turn out. However, you should not use too many leaves, otherwise it may be difficult to fix the craft. You can fix the leaves with an ordinary thread. After that, the leaves need to be straightened so that the flower turns out to be more voluminous. Having made several roses in this way, you can form a whole bouquet that can be wrapped in a large maple leaf: this will make the craft more natural.

Elementary school students can also make crafts from natural materials. So, an interesting option for them would be to create crafts in the form of a portrait.... For this work, you will need the following materials: autumn leaves, colored pencils or felt-tip pens, a simple pencil, glue and cardboard. If you wish, you can take dried flowers or tree branches. The workflow is quite simple. First you need to outline the portrait, especially the lips, eyes.

Whose portrait it turns out to be and how it will look in the end depends only on the child's imagination.... The necessary elements for drawing must be painted with felt-tip pens or colored pencils. After that, you can start using the leaves. Of these, as a rule, the hair of the portrait depicted on the cardboard is made, but here again everything depends on the imagination. Glue the leaves in the necessary places and complete the work, adding, if necessary, a variety of elements to your taste. Ready!

An article made from natural materials in the form of a dancer will also look very interesting. The materials will be required all the same. However, for those children who do not know how to draw, it is recommended to prepare templates for stroking in advance. So, first you need to draw the figure of the dancer.

She can be in any position, it only depends on the preferences of the child. Her hair and additional items such as jewelry or a fan should be colored with colored pencils or felt-tip pens. From the leaves, you need to make a fluffy skirt or dress of a girl, attaching them to cardboard with PVA glue. The craft is ready!

To learn how to make an applique from autumn leaves with your own hands, see the next video.