First Grade Leaf Collages

I love to do this project with the first graders. Its great for fine motor skills and I think the results are always spectacular.

The students use a mixture of water and glue to paste down the tissue squares. I also use oaktag with a leaf traced on it, the paper needs to be thick enough to deal with the giant puddles of glue water that they will inevitably paint on.

 The gluing takes one art class. When the students return to me for the next session, they cut out the leaf and glue it on to a square of paper. Then we discuss borders, and patterns and they use cut paper squares in a variety of colors for the border. They can do a pattern if they like but its not mandatory.

 I also let them use a sharpie to add the veins to the leaf. I try to throw in a little science lesson and compare the veins in our bodies to the veins in the leaf.

First Grade Leaves: Hot and Cold Colors

The first grade students are still working on some fall themed projects. I really love my Dick Blick liquid water colors. Say that five times fast. I often wonder if Dick Blick should not have just gone with Richard Blick. At any rate, the colors are just so vibrant and the kids just love them. They always give the best results!

I had the students draw some leaves on watercolor paper. I used tracers. I have a love/hate relationship with them and I would never not encourage a student to just draw their own, but this project was not really about drawing so I provided the tracers.

tracing the leaves

After they traced, I gave them some black paint mixed with Elmers glue. I had ordered these little bottles, which were definitely easier for their small hands to use, but you could also save old Elmers bottles for older kids.

This is not really an easy skill for a first grader, but I figured it was worth a shot. They really loved it though and thought it was the best thing ever. Some of them had a hard time with how much pressure to put on the bottle, but honestly I feel like it was a beneficial fine motor activity for them. A lot of the students I teach do not have access to a lot of art materials and don't really get to experiment with different things, so I feel like the more exposure I give them, the better it is. The process is valuable, which to me is the key to a great art project.

So this part took up the first art period. When they came back to see me, we discussed warm and cool colors. I had them just paint the warm colors in the leaves. If I had given them all the paint colors, they might have just painted all their leaves blue and purple  or just mixed all the colors in to make that lovely olivey tinged pukey brown color. So, in an effort to get them to understand warm colors, I only gave them warm colors. The next art session, they got the cool colors for the background.

Adding the cool colors after painting the leaves

I think that they all came out beautiful, they worked really hard and they all enjoyed themselves. I cannot wait to display them.