Of Leaf Art

I would first like to reassure you this evening that I am nearly recovered from the "loss" of our dogs.  My mind has been fully able to wrap around all the glorious aspects of not having two large animals taking up residence in our backyard and the trauma of last night's farewell has mostly passed.

Moving on, this evening I decided to tackle yet another item from our Family Fun Fall Checklist.  As I have had a nice stack of dried leaves hanging out ever since our "Nature Walk" a few weeks ago, I named tonight our evening to "Make Leaf Art."

I'm wishing I took pictures for you, but, sadly, I tend to get caught up in the activity at hand and fail to run for the camera to actually capture it for posterity.  Please forgive me for enjoying the moment.

We began with leaf rubbings, which I thoroughly enjoyed, though the idea kind of flopped as far as our three-year-old was concerned.  She loved, of course, coloring as a family, but the fact that the image of the leaf under her paper was showing in her colored strokes did little to excite her.  And Emmett was just happy to have a crayon in his little hand.  So, after Daddy and I got our creativity out on our own papers, we moved along in the evening's activities.

Next, I traced each child's hand on brown construction paper and cut out the hand, making a tree trunk extend from the wrist.  I then glued this bare tree to another piece of paper and planned for us to glue the dried leaves to the trees.

Micaiah actually really enjoyed this part and did a great job placing her glue-covered leaves.  Meanwhile, Daddy had to do all the work for Emmett - but he still loved having a crayon in his hand.

Sadly, our Elmer's did little to help the leaves actually stick, so that was kind of a flop, too.

But the important thing is we spent time as a family and we made art, with leaves, so that's checked off the list.  At least we I have priorities.