The boys have some little buckets from Baker Ross that they love to play with in the garden, picking and collecting berries and leaves so I thought we could use some of their collected bits and pieces for a garden collage leaf craft. They were happy to collect some more leaves and berries with a specific purpose in mind and were excited to get started arranging them on their picture. This activity can work well for children of any of, and the final picture can be as simple or as complex as they like!

 

To make the craft we used:

  • Thick Cardboard (we used parcel boxes and cut them into rectangles)
  • Plain Paper
  • Clear tape
  • Duck tape
  • A selection of leaves, berries, grass and whatever you can find in your garden or local park

garden collage leaf craft suppliesThe boys loved running around collecting everything they needed. Our garden is quite overgrown in places at the moment so we might as well get some use out of all that extra greenery!

leafgather2We tried to find different shapes and shades of leaves and to add some colour by adding any small flowers and berries that we could find, and talked about the different plants while we picked.

Once we had our nature items ready, we taped the plain paper on to the cardboard to make a firm surface for the collage and used duck tape all around the edges to create a simple frame border. My kids love Duck tape, its very easy to use and the bright colours make an effective border. Mr R and Mr T didn’t even want to stop at just the border they wanted to add extra green tape to make grass for their pictures and blue for the sky, which is not what I originally thought of for the craft but I let them go their own way and use their creativity.

leafducktapeFor the rest of our garden leaf collage crafts, we laid everything out on the page how we wanted it to look and then used clear tape to stick it down. The effect we were going for is a kind of diy laminated effect, making the front of the picture shiny by using the tape. Picking up and sticking down the tape is also quite good fine motor practise and the children have to be careful not to let it fold in on itself.

leaftapingWe squished berries to inject a little more colour into some of the pictures. Another day if we collect some more berries (the boys have eaten most of our berries by now, so maybe next year!) we can use them for a berry splat picture without taping them down but just squishing them to make pictures with their lovely red juice “ink”

leafberrysquishWe had a lot of fun making art with all our garden leaves and berries. Our pictures are quite abstract (its more just about the process especially for my younger ones) but you could use the pieces to make a scene, or make a tree, or anything your child would like.

leafmrt2If you make some different designs with your kids I’d love to see them, you could leave me a picture on the Facebook wall

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