Art with Kids 101: October Leaves

This is a very simple craft that I recently did with my younger siblings.

From collecting the leaves, to coloring, to cutting and pasting this is something they can really get into and enjoy. We made it as a gift to our grandma and they were so excited when they presented it to her :)

You'll first want to collect some leaves from the great outdoors. No kind in particular, just whatever grabs your fancy. I also pressed our leaves in a book for a day, so they laid nice and flat for us.

Place your leaf of choice between two pieces of paper- this makes it easier to hold them in place. Rub crayons over the area, hard or soft to get different effects. It was a lot of fun to see the pattern of the leaves emerge and exclamations of "Wow!" or "Look at this one!" could be heard while we were doing it.

When the outline appears and they're all filled in you can go ahead and cut them out.

Keep going until you have a sizable pile- the wreath will look better if it's full.

 Then cut a wreath shape from some cardboard as shown. You can make it as big or as small as you want, depending on the number of leaves you have and the size of your cardboard. We just used an old pizza box.

Cut it out, never minding if it's not perfect because the leaves will cover the imperfections.

Arrange the leaves however you wish. 

Once they are in the place you want them, go ahead and glue them down. We just used a regular glue stick and it worked fine.

Keep layering and covering the cardboard with leaves until there are no more leaves and the cardboard has disappeared.

Hang it up with some string or ribbon and viola! you have a fall "leaf" wreath that doesn't turn brown like real leaves.

This is so versatile it could be adapted with totally different colors and leaf shapes. And the best part? The kids loved helping with everything and enjoyed it immensely. 



Ramblings of a 13 year old

I am finally taking the time to post, lest you think this blog has been abandoned. I'm really sorry we haven't been blogging lately and I know that you've probably heard this before but, we are literally swamped! School takes up a fairly big chunk of my day, and afterwards there's always something to be done: laundry, cooking, cleaning and school corrections. Plus, our dad finished the master bedroom in our house, and then, much to the delight of my siblings and I, he started working on our 2 bedrooms upstairs. My dad decided to start on the boys bedroom first so they had to move into my bedroom, which included them taking all of their numerous belongings into my room (a.k.a. two hefty dressers, two boxes a piece of items that were too precious to throw out, two twin mattresses, and all of their extra paraphenalia.).
It was actually okay and very livable, but I can tell you it was a relief when they moved down into the living room for a while. Then dad thought he might as well do both of our bedrooms at the same time, so out we went into the living room, dressers, beds and all. Now the boys had to move down to the basement and we took over the living room, which is where we are at this moment. Dad has almost finished mudding the walls so we will soon be able to prime and then paint the walls which means that soon we will be able to move back upstairs! Hooray! - because the living room does all very well to sleep in, but it is rather crowded and when you have 3 little siblings who tend to be very destructive, and your "bedroom" is the first thing people see when they walk into your house, um, well, let's just say it makes for an interesting life!
Well, I think I'm going to head to bed now, seeing as there is school tomorrow. I am earnestly going to try to post a little more often, but I'm not going to make any promises! Until the next post (whenever that is!).

The Great Pumpkin

Yesterday we went on a field trip to an Amish community. They had a humongous pumpkin patch that has a corn maze and two mazes made out of hay bales. They also had a small petting zoo with pot bellied pigs, loop eared rabbits, regular rabbits, ducks, turkeys, and a whole bunch of varieties of chickens. Some of the chickens were very unique - several of them had feathers on their legs and feet. They looked really funny - not at all like the chickens we are used to. I collected 18 feathers and am planning on making a headdress out of them. At this farm they had lots of squash and pumpkins for sale. They grow all different kinds of varieties of pumpkins; green ones, gray ones, white ones, and even the traditional orange. Some were little, some big, some round, and some flat. They even had one pumpkin that weighed 440 pounds! I bought some gourds and a small pumpkin, along with some Indian corn to decorate our table. Mom bought a Jarrahdale pumpkin to make pie with - until she does, I get to use it with my other decorations. After that, we went to an Amish grocery store. It was so cool. They had all kinds of things there. Sim, Gabe, Nate, and I loved the knives. They also had two different sizes of double barreled rifles that were lighters. When we were leaving the store, we saw lots of Amish children on little carts drawn by horses. Because it was 3:30, we supposed that they were going home from school. I waved and said "Hi" to each one that passed.
So long for now, Si