How to Make a Fall Leaf Collection

A leaf collection is always fun for kids to make. Children love to find interesting-shaped leaves and put them in an album or mount them on poster board. It is also fun to use a leaf identification book to find the names of the leaves children collected. Sometimes, leaf collections will be assigned for school projects, but you don't have to wait for an assignment to make a beautiful fall leaf collection. Not only will your child love collecting the fallen leaves, but it is interesting to see all the different colors in a fall leaf collection.

Things You'll Need

• Leaves
• Plastic bag/ziploc bag
• Posterboard or an acid-free album
• Marker
• Leaf or tree identification book
• Double-sided tape

Instructions

1. Go on a fall leaf collection walk. As you are walking, look on the ground for leaves that have already fallen from the trees. Make sure you have a plastic bag or ziploc bag to store your leaves in. Try to pick leaves that are not too brittle or crunchy yet, so they won't crumble easily. Also, try to find leaves that are different colors to make your fall leaf collection colorful.

2. Organize your leaves when you are back at home or in your classroom. How do you want to set up your album or your poster display? Do you want to put the leaves in order of size? Do you want to alternate colors? Spread all the leaves out on the table in the order you want to put them into your album or on your posterboard.

3. Put the first leaf into your album or mount it on posterboard. The best thing to use for securing your leaf to your display is double-sided tape like people use in scrapbooks. It is acid-free, and it usually is easy to break into little tabs if you have smaller sized leaves. You can get double-sided tape at craft stores and most discount stores like Wal-mart or Target.

4. Find the leaf in a leaf identification book or a book about tree identification. These books, which are available at libraries, will show you the shape of the leaves and the names of the trees. Write underneath your leaf the name of the tree the leaf came from, where you found the leaf (such as in my neighborhood), and the date that you found the leaf.

5. Mount each leaf one-by-one on the posterboard or put them into the album, label each one, and then go on to the next leaf. When you are finished, you will have a beautiful fall leaf collection to share with friends and family members.

Tips & Warnings

• If you use an acid-free photo album for your leaf collection, this is an easy way to safely store your leaves. You might want to get one that can fit 5 x 7 or 8 x 10 photos on each page, so you have room for larger leaves, and you can label each one.

• Try to get as many different color leaves when you are on your leaf collection walk as you can because that will make quite an eye-catching display.