By doing art projects that use autumn leaves, children gain experience with texture (one of seven art elements) and how to describe and create different kinds of surfaces
Autumn leaf surfaces offer a variety of textures for children to touch and observe. Try the following elementary art projects to give children experience with talking about and working with different kinds of textures.
Objectives
Students will identify and describe different kinds of textures.
Students will use art materials to represent different kinds of textures.
Make a Leaf Rubbing
Arrange pressed leaves on a flat surface. Cover them with a thin sheet of paper.
Gently rub over the top of each leaf with the side of a crayon.
Children can keep the rubbings all on the same page or cut them out and glue them to separate pages.
Children can write information next to each leaf, such as its name and where it was collected. They might also use cut-out rubbings as decorative elements in other art projects such as cards, murals, or collages.
Make a Leaf Picture
Draw an outline of a simple shape.
Glue pressed leaves inside the outline to fill in a texture appropriate to the shape. Children might overlap identical leaves to create scales on a fish or shingles on a roof. They might cut or tear different kinds of leaves to create a mixed texture.
Alternatively, they can fill in the outline with crayon leaf rubbings.
Make a Leaf Collage
Gather leaves of a variety of shapes, colors, and textures, some pressed, some fresh, and some dried and crackling to pieces.
Tear, cut, and crumble some leaves. Keep others whole.
Glue leaves and/or bits of leaves to a sheet of paper to make a collage. It might be representational or abstract.
Make a Leaf Print with Paint or Ink
Gather whole leaves of a variety of shapes, sizes, and textures. Children might also use pressed flowers, grasses, or seeds.
Provide children with rubber stamp pads, watercolor paints, tempera paints, and/or acrylic paints.
Have children dip one side of a leaf in a pool of paint or stamp it on an ink stamp pad, and then press it on a sheet of paper to make a print. Children can also load paint onto a leaf by daubing it on with a sponge or brushing it on with a brush.
Have children compare and contrast the effects they get from using different tools, techniques, and kinds of paint or ink.
Children can make abstract or representational pictures.
You can also try this activity with fabric paints and lengths of plain cloth.
Make a Leaf Imprint in Clay
Flatten a lump of clay with a rolling pin.
Place several leaves on the flattened clay and gently press them into the clay with the rolling pin.
Cut out the leaf imprints with a butter knife.
Peel the leaves off of the clay.
The clay leaf imprints can be left to dry or be fired flat, or children can curl and twist their edges to make them look more like real leaves before drying or firing them.
Model Leaf Textures in Dough
Lay different kinds of pressed leaves on card stock. Trace and cut out an outline of each leaf.
Use card stock leaf outlines to cut out leaf-shaped cookies in rolled-out cookie dough.
Have children observe the surface texture of the real leaves and use clean modeling tools (or fondant tools) and colored sprinkles and sugars to recreate these textures on the surfaces of their unbaked cookies.
Bake and serve cookies.
Assessment Discussion Topics
Have children run their fingers over each leaf surface and think of words to describe its texture, such as rough, smooth, or bumpy. Then, ask them to compare and contrast the textures of the two sides of each leaf.
Have children discuss how well each project copies the texture of a leaf. Note that some (rubbing, paint imprint) create two-dimensional versions of a leaf's texture, while others preserve or replicate a leaf's texture in three dimensions. Discuss how texture can be something you see and something you feel.
After this lesson, children's artistic vocabularies will contain new words for describing textures, and they will have new methods for creating and using textures in future artworks. Next, why not have them try some art projects that explore lines and shapes or use a variety of fall materials?
The copyright of the article Use Fall Leaves to Teach the Art Element Texture in Primary School Lesson Plans is owned by Renee Carver. Permission to republish Use Fall Leaves to Teach the Art Element Texture in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
