We have been looking forward to Autumn just so we can try our hand at leaf rubbing! It’s an activity that you can get your children fully involved with and is great for children’s creativity and overall development. Searching for leaves is a fun way to learn tree names and is a good excuse to go for a nature walk.
Autumn is the best time to do leaf rubbing as leaves are starting to fall off the trees, which will make it much easier for little ones to collect. Also, the leaves are a gorgeous variety of colours at this time of the year so you will find interesting ones to use for your art!
I found this to be an excellent activity for both of my toddlers. Firstly going on a walk in the morning and collecting the leaves together. We talked about the leaves, naming and describing them. Then there was the actual activity of the leaf rubbing. After this, they were let loose with a box of leaves to play with!
The leaves we found best for leaf rubbing are; fig, maple, oak, laurel, and hazel. When looking for leaves, try to pick broad ones with prominent veins that are in good condition. Take care to ensure the leaves are not poisonous and to supervise what children are picking up.
The best approach we found was to use masking tape at the top of the paper, onto a smooth flat surface such as a plastic tray. Pop the leaf underneath with the veiny side up. Hold the paper down to keep it still, then use a large crayon to draw over the leaf until the pattern develops.
Which produces results like this…
Both my toddlers 1.5 & 2.5 years old, had great fun attempting the leaf rubbing activity with me! Even if it’s just scribbles from them, they have learnt a lot and had fun throughout the whole process.
If you want to go a step further you can stick some of the leaves onto the paper with double sided sticky tape. This made for great piece of quick autumn art.
With the leaves starting to dry out from the next day this only added to the charm of the craft and it felt very autumnal indeed!
We brought this activity to a toddler group recently and it was successful with both children and adults getting involved.
I hope you have found this useful and that we have inspired you to go on your own nature trail and find some leaves. You could try leaf rubbing with coloured pencils, pastels or another medium to get a different effect.
Feel free to share this post and let me know what you think in the comments, I would also love to hear about your results.
Happy leaf hunting!
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