Autumn is a good time for children’s craft, and leaf collages are among the best of it. They are easy to make and provide hours of entertainment – children enjoy hunting for the leaves as much as using them.
The collecting is half the activity
Do not skip it or substitute leaves you gathered yourself.
A walk with a purpose is a different thing from a walk. Give each child a bag and a rough brief – something red, something with points, the biggest one you can find – and an ordinary walk becomes a hunt.
It also gets them looking closely at things they normally walk past.
Preparing the leaves
Press them. Between sheets of newspaper under a stack of books, for a few days to a week.
Fresh leaves curl and crumble as they dry, and a collage made from unpressed leaves falls apart within a fortnight. Pressing is the step that makes it last.
If you cannot wait, warm ironing between two sheets of paper flattens and dries them in minutes – with adult hands on the iron.
Making the collage
Ordinary paper or card, and glue.
Two approaches, and children usually try both.
Pattern. Leaves arranged by colour, size or shape – a gradient from green through yellow to red, or a spiral, or a border.
Picture. Leaves used as parts of something else. A hedgehog from a spiky leaf, an owl from two rounded ones, a tree from many small ones, a fish, a lion’s mane.
This second approach is where children surprise you, and it is worth not suggesting too much.
Practical points
Lay it all out before gluing. Once a pressed leaf is stuck it does not come off intact.
Use a glue stick rather than liquid glue where possible – wet glue makes thin dried leaves wrinkle.
Work on card rather than paper. The weight of the leaves buckles thin paper.
Making it last
Cover the finished collage with clear adhesive film, or slip it into a plastic sleeve. Dried leaves are fragile and will crumble with handling otherwise.
A collage in a simple frame becomes a proper picture, and children take that seriously.
Other things to do with the leaves
Leaf rubbing – a leaf under paper, rubbed over with the side of a crayon. The veins appear, and it is genuinely surprising the first time.
Leaf printing – paint one side and press onto paper.
A garland, threaded on string across a window.
