Fall Craft for Kids: Tree and Leaf Wall Decoration

Materials:

• 5 white sheets of Bristol Board
• pencil
• paintbrushes
• brown, red, yellow and orange paint
• scissors
• leaf shapes (cut-outs) that are roughly 4-5 inches in height (You can trace real leaves or use printables from the internet) 
• 2 large (12 x 18 inch) sheets of green construction paper
• 6 large sheets of blue construction paper
• clear, wide packing tape
• Velcro

Instructions:

• On one sheet of Bristol Board, draw a tree with pencil that fills up the whole paper. (I looked at a very simple drawing of a tree, and tried to reproduce it - nothing fancy, just 7 thick branches)
• Cut the tree out.
• Give the kids brown paint only, and have them paint as much of the tree as possible. Place it out of reach from the kids to let it dry.
• Rip a sheet of Bristol Board in half, and let the kids paint using only red. Set paintings aside to let dry. (It doesn't matter if they fill the whole paper or not.) Repeat with yellow paint and orange paint, using different pieces of Bristol Board. If they still wish to paint after this, give them all 3 colours at once. Set the various paintings out to dry.

• Use a cut-out of a leaf, or a real leaf (it should be about 3 and 1/2 to 4 inches tall), to trace leaf shapes onto the yellow, orange and red paintings.
• Cut out the leaf shapes. Place Velcro on the backs of all the leaves.

• Find the wall space where you would like to put the tree up.
• Using the clear packing tape, stick two pieces of green construction paper horizontally (and side by side) to the wall. Do the same with two pieces of blue construction paper, placing them directly above the green paper. Repeat two times, using all 6 pieces of blue construction paper.
• Using the clear packing tape, stick the tree on top of this background. Tape each and every branch to the background. Once you have done this, look over every part of the tree and background, taping every bit of exposed paper edges. (Otherwise, the children most likely WILL find the little bit of edge you haven't taped down, and rip the wall display down!)
• Stick Velcro (opposite side of what you used for leaves) onto branches of the tree, and onto the green construction paper (ground). You could also stick pieces of Velcro to the blue construction paper, so that it looks like leaves are falling from the tree.

• Lastly, show the kids how to stick the leaves to the Velcro on the wall display. They can stick them on, or take them off whenever they please! (You could also use it to help teach colours by asking them to stick on or take off only the yellow leaves, etc.)