Painted Leaf Critters

Autumn is here! The beautiful colours, the pumpkin spice everything, the crisp air, the hot cocoa, scarves, boots and a never-ending supply of craft supplies falling all over the ground, free for the taking! That's right. The fallen leaves. The prettiest and most inexpensive craft supply you could ever want.

Every autumn season, the kids and I gather basketloads of fallen leaves to play and create with. This week, we created our own little leaf critters from card stock, glue, paint and a whole lot of imagination.

The only instruction I gave to the children was to create whatever creature they could dream up, whether it was real or imaginary. The rest I left up to them!

You Will Need:

• fallen leaves
• acrylic craft paints
• paint brushes
• Tacky Glue (it dries the fastest and holds really well!)
• cotton swabs or popsicle sticks for placing the glue
• card stock or heavy paper
• scissors

Instructions:

1. Start by gathering leaves of all shapes, sizes and colours.

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2. Arrange the leaves on paper or card stock and glue them in place. We put our glue in a container and let the kids dip their leaves and stems in it. They could also use the cotton swabs and spread it on their leaves.

3. Once the leaves are glued to the card stock, the painting can begin!

That's it! So simple, so much fun and so inexpensive!

The children spent well over an hour stretching their imaginations to create all sorts of leaf critters. All the while, their fine-motor dexterity and shape recognition skills got a complete work out and their knowledge of colour theory increased as they tried to mix JUST the right colour of paint for their critters.

And now our walls are full of happy autumn friends!