LEAF MAN NATURE WALK & ACTIVITIES

When the leaves start to fall off the trees- it’s fall! . That also means it’s time to read the book Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert. A wonderful book about a pile of leaves that look like a man. Hence, the title “Leaf man”. The leaf man travels with the wind and sees more amazing things made out of leaves. The illustrations are made from actual leaves and die cut pages- not only is it a book, but also beautiful artwork! Create your own beautiful artwork out of leaves by completing the activities below.

Materials:

• Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert
• bag (to put collected leaves in)
• leaves, acorns, sticks, rocks (get on nature walk)
• construction paper
• scissors
• crayons (no paper on)
• regular white paper (ink jet)

Process:

Start by reading Leaf Man to your child/children. If you don’t have a copy or are unable to get one fro your local library. Here is a great link to watch a read aloud on YouTube. After reading/watching the book, discuss where you can find leaves, acorns, pine cones and the other objects used to create the pictures in the book.

Now, go on a nature walk. Bring along a bag to put your collection in.

Once home, spread all of your collection out and organize by category.

Once organized, using the book, try to identify the leaves you have found.

Now, let your imagination and creativity take over. Create your very own Leaf Man! It can look like the Leaf Man in the book or

Older children can try to remake the images in the book or smaller children with help from an adult. Try to make up new animals or creatures as well!

Here are some examples we made:

Unfortunately the artwork we made won’t last more than a few days due to the leaves shriveling. In order to keep our creations, we made a leaf rubbing collage of our leaf person. If you want to keep your pictures, buy artificial leaves. Artificial leaves do not work as well for leaf rubbings. Below is an exmaple of a kitty my daughter made in school.

To do a rubbing:

1.) Place leaf (bottom side facing up)under a white sheet of paper.

2.) Using a crayon on its side, rub across the paper where the leaf is under. The outline of the leaf will start to come through, the more your rub.

3.) Repeat with another leaf on the same paper if room, or on a new sheet.

Once you have done rubbing of all the leaves in your leaf person, cut them out and assemble him/her back together.

Note: You can use artificial leaves to create leaf creatures if you want to save them.