Tear and Paste Falling Leaves

      Young students will enjoy tearing and pasting fall leaves in order to recreate a lovely Autumn scene. The teacher will need to cut a simple tree trunk to cover the length of a large standard sized piece of grey construction paper. He or she will also need to cut rakes from dark brown construction paper in advance. I have included two patterns for the rakes below.

1. Give each young students brightly colored fall papers to tear for the leafs in this picture. 
2. After pasting their tree trunk onto their grey paper, students will need to paste and arrange brightly colored shredded papers on the tree, falling from the tree and in a large pile at the foot of the tree. This simple art project could take up to twenty five or thirty minutes depending upon the attention span of the participants. 
3. Play a selection of music during the activity to enhance the experience for your young students. 
4. After they have built up enough leaves under their fall tree, glue the ladder over them and leaning up against the tree. 
5. Don't forget to pinch the ends of the rake to form an angle. 
6. After the glue has dried, give the students a dark brown marker and encourage them to draw grooves into their tree trunk for added effect.

The young students at the early learning center are shredding fall colored papers for their simple rake pictures.
 I have included the simpler rake pattern below for those of you who would prefer to make a simpler version of
 the art lesson.

Look for more Autumn related art projects on our Early Learning Center's pinboard!