Potato Stamp Forest Picture:
NOTE: You can discuss the importance of nature reserves, forests, and areas with many trees before doing this craft. The Family Brainstorm Activity below can help with this.
Materials: One or two potatoes cut in half, white paper, green paint (various hues) or other leave inspired colours for autumn trees, brown paint, wax paper, paint brushes, newspaper or plastic to cover the work area, old clothes or art smock, paper towels, jar of water.
Step 1: Have your child paint the cut side of a potato. Show your child how to press it onto the white paper (leaving it pressed for the count of 5 or more) and then gently lifting it upwards so as not to smudge. Once removed the oval stamp shape will be the leafy top of a tree.
Step 2: Encourage your child to use the colours he/she wants and to stamp them however he/she wants on the page to create a forest.
Step 3: Encourage your child to add embellishments like tree truck with brown paint, grass or dirt for the ground, even a sky and birds.
Step 4: Let the painting dry and then display or glue into your Family Theme Day Scrapbook.
Paper Towel Roll Trees:
Materials: Empty paper towel rolls or toilet paper rolls, child safe scissors, green paper, construction or cardboard paper, clear tape, glue stick.
Step 1: To make a larger tree use the paper towel roll. To make a fir tree use the toilet paper roll. Cut some slits on the bottom of the paper roll (not too big—3 cm or 1 inch is best). Bend the slits to look like roots and tape them to the construction paper or cardboard.
Step 2: For a larger tree cut more slits at the top of the tree and bend and fold and squish them in different directions to make branches.
Step 3: For a larger tree you could leave it bare as in the above step or cut out more branches from brown paper and leaves from green paper (or use more autumn colours if desired) and glue or tape to the paper roll.
Step 4: To make a fir tree cut a half circle out of green paper and then bend it into a cone shape. Set the cone on top of the toilet paper roll.
Step 5: Depending on the size of your construction paper or cardboard your child could create a whole forest. Great for playing with action figures or LEGO figures or plastic animal toys.
Photo: C. Wright
NOTE: You can go for a Family Walk or Hike before doing this craft to collect leaves from the ground. Encourage your kids to find the leaves from the ground and not to break them from live trees as this will damage them. If you need to remove leaves from a living tree (adult step only) because you cannot find any leaves on the ground be sure to pinch gently to remove a leaf so that the branch is not damaged.
Tree Hands:
NOTE: If you are doing the above craft (Potato Stamp Trees) leave your paint supplies out and try this craft as well.
Materials: White paper, green paint (various hues) or other leave inspired colours for autumn trees, brown paint, wax paper, paint brush, old pencil with an eraser you don’t mind wrecking, newspaper or plastic to cover the work area, old clothes or art smock, paper towels, jar of water.
Step 1: Help your child paint his/her palm and arm brown and then guide him/her to press the painted arm/hand onto the white paper. Gently press and keep pressed for a count of 5 or more and then slowly lift the arm up.
Step 2: The arm and hand should make a basic tree shape. My eldest liked his the way it was but my youngest wanted to add more paint to make the trunk thicker. Let your kids decide.
Step 3: Have your child glue the four trees onto the divided paper - one in each section.
Step 4: Cut out small squares of tissue paper from each of the four colours.
Step 5: Put some white glue on a piece of waxed paper.
Step 6: Show your child how to fit a square of tissue paper around the eraser tip of a pencil. Pinch the tissue paper tightly to keep it against the pencil and then dip into the white glue.
Step 7: Press the pencil with the tissue and glue onto one of the trees glued to the paper. Ask your child in advance which colours would represent which season. White is for the snow of winter covering the tree. Pink is for the blossoming blooms on spring trees. Green is for the full summer tree. Orange is for the autumn tree.
Step 8: Display and enjoy!
Twig Trees:
NOTE: You can go for a Family Walk or Hike before doing this craft to collect twigs from the ground. Encourage your kids to find the twigs from the forest floor and not to break them from live trees as this will damage them.
Materials: Various thin twigs, cardboard, white glue, (Optional) paints to decorate or dried beans or lentils or leaves to glue on.
Step 1: Encourage creativity with this one and let your child create his/her own tree picture using the twigs and white glue.
Step 2: This craft will take a long time to dry but once it does your child could decorate it more by using paint to add leaves, or by gluing dried beans or lentils as leaves, or by gluing actual leaves.
Step 3: Let the decorations dry and then display!
TREE STICKER COLLAGE:
Materials: Coloured paper, stickers with trees or woodland creatures on them, markers and crayons (optional).
Step 1: Give your child the stickers or trees and let him/her create a forest scene or a collage. If you cannot find tree stickers draw a simple tree and have your child add woodland creatures onto it.
Step 2 (Optional): Encourage your child to add embellishments with pencil, markers, crayons or pencil crayons if he/she desires.
Step 3: Show your child how to dip the pencil eraser into the green paint (on the waxed paper) and then press it to the paper to create dot leaves. Let your child “decorate” the tree with leaves and even make grass if desired.
Step 4: Let the picture dry and then display or glue into your Family Theme Day Scrapbook.
Arbor Day/ Trees
Paper Leaf Crown:
Turn your child into a wood nymph by making this simple leaf crown.
Materials: Green paper (or green and brown paper, or use more fall colours for an autumn crown), child safe scissors, stapler or tape or glue.
Step 1: Cut a long strip of paper (either green or brown) to be the headband and measure it around your child’s head. Pinch together the ends once it fits and staple or tape into place.
Step 2: Cut out various shapes and types of leaves from the paper (for a template use my Leaves of Autumn Colouring Page) from the Autumn Theme Day—likewise your child could just colour that colouring page and then cut out the leaves for this craft) and then glue, tape or staple them to the headband/crown.
Leaf Rubbings or Leaf Paint Prints:
Materials: Various leaves, crayons (best if the paper wrapping is peeled off), white paper.
Step 1: Take a leaf and set it under a piece of paper. Have your child choose the colour of crayon to use.
Step 2: Rub the side of the crayon over the spot where the leaf rests to leave an impression or leaf rubbing on the paper.
Step 3: Glue into your Family Theme Day Scrapbook once dry.
VARIATION: You can also do a variation of this if you are having this Theme Day in a season where there are not many leaves around by making bark rubbings. Just lean the paper against a tree and rub with a crayon.
Tree Hands:
NOTE: If you are doing the above craft (Potato Stamp Trees) leave your paint supplies out and try this craft as well.
Materials: White paper, green paint (various hues) or other leave inspired colours for autumn trees, brown paint, wax paper, paint brush, old pencil with an eraser you don’t mind wrecking, newspaper or plastic to cover the work area, old clothes or art smock, paper towels, jar of water.
Step 1: Help your child paint his/her palm and arm brown and then guide him/her to press the painted arm/hand onto the white paper. Gently press and keep pressed for a count of 5 or more and then slowly lift the arm up.
Step 2: The arm and hand should make a basic tree shape. My eldest liked his the way it was but my youngest wanted to add more paint to make the trunk thicker. Let your kids decide.
Hand Trees with Magazine Leaves:
This was my favourite craft of this Theme Day and I really want to frame it for our house!
Materials: Brown paper, white paper (large—we used a scrapbook sized page), old magazines to cut up, child safe scissors, glue stick, pencil.
Step 1: Trace your child’s hand and arm onto the brown paper to make a tree trunk. Cut it out and glue it to the white paper.
Step 2: Go through old magazines and searach for pages with green on them (even green with words on them). Rip out the pages and together cut these green pages to make leaves for the tree. This is harder for little ones to do but encourage them to look for more green in the magazines while you cut out the leaf shapes.
Step 3: Glue the leaves around the hand tree trunk.
Step 4: (Optional) We had a lot of left over leaves and decided to cut them in half and use them as grass for the bottom of the picture.
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PRESCHOOL CRAFT IDEA
Four Seasons Tissue Paper Tree:
NOTE: This Theme Day is a good time to review the seasons with your little ones. Studying trees is the easiest way to see the various changes that nature goes through each season. This craft is a great reminder of that.
Materials: Colored paper (we used yellow), brown paper, child safe scissors, white glue, waxed paper, pencil, ruler, white tissue paper, pink tissue paper, green tissue paper, orange or yellow tissue paper.
Step 1: Fold the paper in half and then fold again to divide the paper into four sections. Use a ruler and pencil to mark off these sections.
Step 2: Fold the brown piece of paper over three times and then cut out a simple tree shape. By folding the paper each and cutting through the layers you will get four trees that are the same.
VARIATION: Instead of leaf rubbings you can paint each leaf and then press it to the white paper to leave an imprint of the leaf.
CRAFTS