Admittedly Fall is the best time for beautiful leaf crafts. However, you do not have to limit making a leaf craft in any season since these leaves are only used as templates . I saw the template above on Pinterest which came from artprojectsforkids.com

I decided to use the idea at least partially. The idea was to trace leaves, add design elements inside by copying various patterns, color in lines by using  a Color Oil Pastel Set and then washing over it with some watercolors.

There are 3 types of watercolors you can use. You can use the tubes like the Reeves Water Colour Paint s and mix with water so it is easy to wash. You can use the old fashioned Prang Washable Watercolor types that don’t give such bright washes or you can use Liquid Watercolors, which come already ready to use and have beautiful colors to choose from.

I brought in leaves from my backyard which happened to be yellow. I chose big ones and had the children in this class of kindergarten choose one and trace it with a pencil.

Then I gave each of them a sheet with boxes of all different kinds of lines and patterns to copy from.

I told the children to divide their drawn leaves into sections and then to choose any of the patterns from the  paper and to fill each section with that pattern of lines or shapes.

As they began to do so, some children were quicker than others and I realized my mistake. I had thought the pastels that they were going to use over the lines would be too thick so I thought if they made the lines first with pencils it would be easier.

This was not a good idea.

The reason it wasn’t a good idea was because some of them were taking so long to do the pencil lines that they were losing lots of time and would have no time to add the oil pastels.

When I saw this happening I changed midstream and told them to continue without the pencil lines.

When I saw one child start to outline the leaf with a dark color I told the rest of the children to do the same, as I also realized that it would show up better in the end.

As usual there are enormous differences in how the children produce. From very mature to extremely immature.

After they were done we gave them watercolors to paint over the whole picture. The oil pastels resist the watercolors and look really vibrant. We had the tubes on hand and mixed them with water so they could create a wash.

If you like this activity, please share.

I did a similar activity not that long ago using oil pastels and watercolor art that shows how you can use this activity for design coloring as well.