Kids Summer Craft- Leaf Crafts

I'm a big supporter of kids crafts, and during summer time you and your child need to look no farther than your backyard for inspiration. I'll be talking about a lot of summer appropriate kids arts and crafts projects in the next couple of months, but this week I'm going to start with all the things you can do with leaves.

When most people think of leaf crafts, they think leaf rubbings. But that only really works in fall with dried out leaves. Here's what you can do with fresh green leaves of summer:

Leaf Prints:
The possibilities are pretty endless when it comes to making prints with leaves. A simple and cheap craft for kids is to just pick out some leaves from your yard or park, and make prints on paper. You can use these as fridge decoration or even greeting cards. This is a messy craft, so make sure you put down plenty of newspaper and get your child wearing a smock or an old t-shirt!

1. Instruct your child to paint one side of the leaf, and encourage them to just thinly coat the leaf--otherwise the print will be just a big blob of paint. 
2. Place the leaf face down on the piece of paper. You can use any paper, but a thicker paper that can absorb some moisture works best.
3. Cover the the leaf with a layer of paper towel, and then a layer of wax paper.
4. With a bayer (or if you don't have one, a rolling pin will also work in a pinch) lightly roll over the leaf. This can be hard for small kids as they often want to press down hard, so really encourage them to roll as gently as possible.
5. You've got your print! Feel free to have this be it, or after it dries, your child can add to it by drawing or other paint.

Variation: Use water color, and let your child make a simple background with a few colors. Once it dries, you can put the leaf print on this.

Martha Stewart takes this idea from simple kids craft to something fun for older children or even adults. She suggests using this process with fabric paint on a canvas bag. And of course as she points out this can be used on pillow shams, tablecloths, aprons,  or any other fabric based item. It's a little more complicated as you have to heat set the final piece after it dries with an iron, but besides the ironing this is something that your kid could do too! To find directions for her craft go here.

Now get outside with your child and start collecting some leaves!