How to Make Animals From Fall Leaves

Fall is one of the best times of year. The holidays beckon, the air becomes brisk and leaves turn bright colors. Instead of just raking them up and throwing them into a bag, make crafts out of them with help from your children. Animals, in particular, are very easy to make from leaves and, with a little creativity, you can have an entire zoo set up in your home. Here are two different animal crafts you can make from fall leaves.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Leaves, assorted colors, sizes, patterns
• Construction paper
• Paper towels
• White glue
• Heavy book
• Crayons
• Small pine cone
• Wiggly eyes
• Scissors
• Felt

Animal Leaf Craft

1. Find leaves of various colors, shape, and sizes. Rinse them off to remove dirt and let them dry.

2. 

   Lay some leaves on a large piece of construction paper and see what animal shapes they remind you of. Move the leaves around, place them together, one on top of another, or behind each other to see what animal they form. You can make feet, claws, feathers, beaks or whatever else you think of. Do you see a dog, mouse, bird, or other animal shape?

3. Glue the leaves carefully together in the shape of the animal that you came up with.

4. Glue the animal to the construction paper. After the glue is dry, put paper towels over the leaves, place a heavy book on top, and leave it alone for a few days so that the leaves become flat.

5. Use crayons to add a background scene to your animal to turn it into a picture. Frame the picture to hang on a wall or on your refrigerator. Make more animals to make a bigger scene for your picture.

Leaf Turkey Craft

6. Start by collecting leaves in various colors. The brighter the colors, the better.

7. Press the leaves by placing them between pages of a heavy book. Close the book carefully and let the leaves sit for a few days so they become flat, but not crunchy and breakable.

8. Glue the leaves together in the shape of a fan. These are the turkey's feathers. Do this by gluing the leaves upside down and slowly moving outward with more and more leaves. Then turn it over after you are done gluing. When done making your fan, glue the leaves onto a large piece of construction paper.

9. Glue the pine cone onto the bottom of the fan. This is the turkey's body. Let dry for at least one hour.

10. Take a piece of felt and cut out a nose shaped like a triangle for the beak. Glue it to the pine cone.

11. Make a red wobbler for the turkey’s chin from felt and glue that on as well. Finally, add two wiggly eyes by gluing them onto the pine cone as well.

Tips & Warnings

• Let the glue dry between steps to make assembling the craft easier.
• Keep sharp objects, such as scissors, away from young children.