Autumn leaves are falling down, the weather is becoming chilly and we are pulling on those long sleeves again. We can celebrate this time of year with our children by creating some lovely art works. In this post we’ll show you how to make a colourful fingerprint Autumn tree, an leaf Autumn crown and some leaves using coloured water and spices.
Finger print Autumn tree
You will need:
- Bowls of different coloured thick paint
- An outline of a tree on paper
- Apron
To do:
- Dip fingers into the bowl of paint and press gently on the branches of the tree
- Use different colours until the tree is filled with colourful finger prints, creating a beautiful autumn tree.
Note: Excellent for children’s fine motor skills.
Autumn crowns
You will need:
- Different shaped autumn leaves
- 2 A 4 Cardboard /staples
- Glue
To do:
- Staple the 2 A 4 cardboards together.
- Measure the size of the stapled cardboard around your child’s head and staple again to create a crown.
- Paste colourful autumn leaves around the crown.
- Your child can also paint the cardboard crown before pasting the autumn leaves.
Note: This is a wonderful opportunity for your children to explore nature and have fun collecting autumn leaves in the garden
Autumn leaves with food colouring and spices:
This idea comes from The Imagination Tree but you’ll see she used coffee filters to create her leaves. We used paper and a template of leaves for the children to colour.
You will need:
food colouring (yellow, red)- 3 jars
- water
- spices (nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger)
- paper with pictures of leaves
- a contrasting coloured paper to stick them against
- glitter (gold)
- squirting bottles
- newspaper and a tray to absorb excess water
To do:
Add water to each bottle- Bottle 1: red food co
louring + half a teaspoon cinnamon - Bottle 2: yellow food colouring + half a teaspoon ginger
- Bottle 3: double dose of yellow to make orange + half a teaspoon nutmeg
- Get the children to squirt the mixture onto their paper, taking turns with the different colours. Use the newspaper and tray underneath.
- If you want the different colours to be clear, you need to be careful for them not to mix, and rather leave them to dry or absorb the excess water with a tissue. On the other hand you can let them mix for one uniform brown/ orange colour.
- After they are dry cut them out and add the gold glitter for the veins of the leaf.
Another great Autumn activity for children is to go outside and play in the leaves. In this video the children are singing an Autumn song.
