Salaric

Paper Leaf

A while ago we went to Cheltenham museum and as part of one of the exhibits the children could make leaves to hang on a tree. My husband made this leaf with our two year old.

He started off with a green circle of waxy tissue paper and folded an edge into the middle so that part of the edge was on the other edge of the circle, then he folded it in half and cut out a crescent shape. This left a leaf shape. Whilst it was folded in half he folded out from the middle crease, which represented the main middle vein in the leaf. The folds were at an angle and he only made the folds/creases ‘hard’ by running his finger over them near the main vein. This gave the leaf its characteristic shape.

The idea of these leaves was to put them on a ‘alphabet’ tree with something written on them, but I think with different greens it would be a good project to make for summer mobiles and you could even get some twisty twigs to act as a tree to hang the leaves on. Alter the colours to include yellows, oranges, reds and browns and you could have fun with some sort of autumn tree.