My kids have been fascinated with the plant life that surrounds our school and I sometimes have to check pockets for leaves, sticks and acorns. I needed an art project for my students to do and I keep hoping that the weather will get cooler so I am watching for changing leaves to no avail.
I had a National Geographic magazine that showed changing seasons and before we started I took a few minutes to explain why leaves change color in the fall.
Supplies:
Brown paper lunch sacks
paper plates
multi-colored tissue paper
scissors
liquid glue
Before we even started I had pre-cut the tissue paper into 1/2" squares so that my students could focus on the project instead of worrying about what size their tissue paper needed to be. Each person was given a brown paper lunch sack which we took great pleasure in crumpling up to give our trunks the weather bark look. After flattening out the bags again we cut the bag into strips of varying widths and lengths, just be careful not to make them longer than half the bag or your trunk won't have the structure to stand.
After cutting the top part of the bag into strips you will need to fluff out your bag again so that you can create yourself a trunk before shaping your branches. Some of this is trial and error based on how you want your tree to look. The next step is to take the strips you have made at twist some of them together so that they form branches. It works best is the strips you twist together are not directly next to each other.
Glue the bottom of your trunk to a paper plate so that you have a base for your tree to stand on. It would probably look great with green or brown plates, but you work with what you've got.
Lastly you glue your leaves where you want them. We had a variety of different color leaves and some of the kids even crumpled theirs up a little to give it a more authentic look. The kids had a lot of fun gluing them on the trees or just making piles of them on the plate.
The length of the instructions make it look difficult, but if I can get my special ed class to do it then it can't be as hard as it sounds, right?
I had a National Geographic magazine that showed changing seasons and before we started I took a few minutes to explain why leaves change color in the fall.
Supplies:
Brown paper lunch sacks
paper plates
multi-colored tissue paper
scissors
liquid glue
Before we even started I had pre-cut the tissue paper into 1/2" squares so that my students could focus on the project instead of worrying about what size their tissue paper needed to be. Each person was given a brown paper lunch sack which we took great pleasure in crumpling up to give our trunks the weather bark look. After flattening out the bags again we cut the bag into strips of varying widths and lengths, just be careful not to make them longer than half the bag or your trunk won't have the structure to stand.
After cutting the top part of the bag into strips you will need to fluff out your bag again so that you can create yourself a trunk before shaping your branches. Some of this is trial and error based on how you want your tree to look. The next step is to take the strips you have made at twist some of them together so that they form branches. It works best is the strips you twist together are not directly next to each other.
Glue the bottom of your trunk to a paper plate so that you have a base for your tree to stand on. It would probably look great with green or brown plates, but you work with what you've got.
Lastly you glue your leaves where you want them. We had a variety of different color leaves and some of the kids even crumpled theirs up a little to give it a more authentic look. The kids had a lot of fun gluing them on the trees or just making piles of them on the plate.
The length of the instructions make it look difficult, but if I can get my special ed class to do it then it can't be as hard as it sounds, right?
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