Fall Leaves Handprint Tree

It's been a while since we just posted a craft that's just for the fun of doing a craft. So, to get back to our "roots" (pun moderately intended) we're sharing our Fall Leaves Handprint Tree. 

We've been having fun exploring leaves this week as our leaves are just beginning to turn color. My hope is in a few more days we'll be close to really seeing that beautiful New England foliage. We love handprint art, and used the idea of a handprint tree in our Thankful Tree project in some of our Thanksgiving Posts previously. So while waiting for the leaves to turn, we created our own fall foliage tree. 

Our materials included foam leaves from the Dollar Store, leaf shapes cut out of scrapbook paper scraps, paint, white glue (not pictured), and paint. We don't have brown poster paint, so we mixed red and green paint to create brown (we added a touch of white and yellow too.)

First we painted one of each of the boys' hands and arms up to almost their elbows. We found that to print them it was easiest to just lay on the floor. (If you were doing it at a table, printing would probably work just fine by sitting.)  Afterwards we let them dry for a little bit. 

Project note: Even though Little Brother is getting older, it still can be tricky to get a handprint in paint from a toddler. He really just wants to finger paint with it, so if you're trying this with a littler kiddo don't get discouraged if you're first few attempts don't work out. (And make sure you're both wearing clothes that are okay to get messy.) 

After the handprints dried all three of us sat and worked on gluing down leaves onto our trees. We all experimented a little with where to glue the leaves. For Little Brother I put the glue down and let him stick the leaves on. I helped him add some more on top. Big Brother worked on one tree on his own, and then we worked together on the last tree and decided to try adding some leaves onto the ground too. 

Now we have some beautiful fall trees decorating our fridge as we welcome in the season!

Have you seen our Fall Crafts and Learning Activities Board on Pinterest? Several great ideas there for more fall crafting fun.