MAKE ·Oct 14, 2014

Play with Leaves

Fall for Fall.

Surprise someone.

We have a dog, Henry, who I walk every day. Even when the kids are at school, I find myself, time after time, returning home with handfuls of leaves and kid-related ideas. As I followed the path back home, last week, I noticed that I was picking up leaves until I hit our front steps and while doing this, I had an idea. Why not make a leave trail to welcome the kids home?

Big or small — anyone can make a leaf trail.

Wouldn’t a path of leaves be a fun, subtle, surprise to welcome someone in your front door or a great activity for toddler creation?

Make happy leaves. Make spooky leaves.
Keep it simple or use your imagination to make an elaborative labyrinth trails —
but, do it: make a leaf trail.

You’re more creative that you realise and I don’t really think a how-to is necessary, but, just in case you’d like a little more, I’ll share how to make these exact leaves which were used for my leaf trail. Since this was a spontaneous act, as I took my last step up our stairs, I just reached for a kitchen knife and cutting board to see if I could cut the leafs without even pulling out my regular art supplies and it worked. After quickly cutting faces into the leaves, I returned to our walkway and placed the leaves in a trail.

If you are looking for a project with tiny kids or a class, it’s such a fun way to work together and to build something. Start with a walk or excursion to just pick leaves and then, build a leaf trail together. Make a trail, build a figure-8 game or to even, work on spelling? Use your imagination or follow the kids imaginations.

However, if you do have bigger kids and would like to do some real leaf creating before building a trail, you’ll need a knife and cutting surface or a paper-hole-punch to create faces, animals or like I did: jack-o-lanterns. I think a jack-o-lantern trail would be a really fun little addition to a Halloween party.

Supplies:

Leafs, Cutting Item: xacto knives (or kitchen knives) hole punches, scissors if you have large leaves.