Day 99: leaves and toilet paper tubes

Do you know "No Time for Flash Cards" ?  It is a great blog!  And yesterday (or maybe the day before) I saw a great activity there.  And then my friend Holly emailed me about the same activity.  It must be a good one if other people are emailing me about it! So for a really great tutorial go here or stick around and see our version!

We have done leaf rubbbing before but the tips that she gave were great and made it go MUCH better this time.

First improvement, taping down the leaves. It's a bad picture but we taped down the stems (vein side UP!) and then on the rolled up a piece of tape to put on the backs of the bigger ones.

This made it so the leaves wouldn't move around, much easier to rub over them.  

Then we took another piece of paper and layed that on top and taped it to the table.  Let the rubbing begin!

 

 
 

Okay, now the next steps are when it gets crazy!  We painted three toilet paper rolls green to be tree trunks.  Yes, I know tree trunks are brown but Sam thought we needed a more fun color. While the paint dried we went on about our day.

 
And while Sam worked on other projects (doesn't every kid love stickers?  even if they are just square school stickers from the Target dollar section!) I cut out each leaf.

The leaves were then taped to the green toilet paper roll stems!  I even taped two toilet paper rolls together to make a tall one and a short one.   
 
 

Sitting in one of our windowsills now and they are adorable. 

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The Nitty Gritty!

This activity combined my two favorite things; toilet paper tubes and a reason to collect fall leaves.  So fun.

It was a bit of a challenge to teach Sam how to hold the crayon and make it work laying on its side.  We have some triangle shaped crayola crayons that were much easier for her to use.  The rolling it like playdough method that she kept trying to convince me would work just didn't cut it.  Eventually she gave up on that idea and watched how I was doing it.  The younger the child the more help or instruction they might need on this.  With older kids they can do the cutting out of the leaves and help a bit more with the taping.  Sam loved collecting the leaves and the rubbing!

Comments

[Livy]

Great idea! I am looking forward to the day my baby is old enough to do fun projects like that.

[gina]

I am going to do this with L, but also with my students at school. SO cute. Also? I am following No Time for Flash Cards now. Like I needed another blog to follow. ;)

[Janet]

Oh they ARE adorable! What a great activity. Great tip to tape the leaves down and then tape the paper down too.

[beckie & the grub]

Aw, I can't wait until my girl is old enough for projects!

[Melissa Moore]

Love your blog! Mommy's Lil Monster Bash sent me!