Painting | Art Project | Fall Leaves | Kids | Acrylic

By Spramani Elaun

Painting leaves with children is easy, yet brings such joy.

Doing this painting activity can leave wonderful seasonal memories for a child.

Leaves are falling off tress everywhere!

Studying leaves helps children learn about seasons and why they happen.

Celebrate the season change by studying and talking about leaves.

One way is to paint leaves and get up close and look at nature in this way.

Leaves are free and everywhere.

Many sizes of leaves exist from tiny to large.

Leaves are fragile so the first thing you want to tell young children is to handle leaves gently.

Leaves collected from the ground are much more fragile than freshly picked leaves off trees.

Painting leaves is also a great way to integrate science and visual art learning together.

Leaves are free and everywhere!

When my own kids were younger they loved collecting leaves to decorate our home and learning spaces with.

Give kids a basket and have them hunt and gather their own leaves they want to paint.

This part is so much fun and sparks up other conversations about nature.

Here is a picture of leaves painted, we rounded up from our Pinterest pins.

These images can give you a quick idea of what kids could possibly paint on leaves.

If you visit our Pinterest pages you will find the links for these blogs.

Leaf Painting Prep

Natural fallen leaves are not a flat surface to paint on.

Some leaves will be curvy and wavy.

If you want you can press leaves in book pages for a few hours or the day before to make.

Pressing leaves will be easier to paint on.

You could do this activity first leading up to art day.

*Note

If a leaf gets completely dried out it will start to crack and fall apart.

You don’t want to place leaves in this phase in book pages for pressing, pressing will only make leaf crumble and fall to pieces.

Leaf painting space

Prepare a space were kids can get messy without worrying about paint spreading.

It’s much easier for kids to paint if leaves are on a sturdy flat table surface.

Use a drop cloth or recycled old newsprint to work on top of.

Everyone working in this area will get messy, so you and kids should dress in clothes that can truly get messy.

Some paints do not wash off clothes.

You can also use an artist apron or smock to protect paint from nice clothes.

If you want to learn more about painting set-ups with kids, I recommend you review my book KIDS PAINTING.

Leaf Painting Supplies List

SMOCK – Smock or an apron cover-up.

PAINTBRUSHES – Small paint brushes

WATER-JAR – Water jar for washing brushes and easy clean-up.

NAPKINS – Napkins for paint brush and paint spills.

PAINT – Acrylic or Tempera, we use acrylic in my art classes for better long-lasting results.

PALETTE – Palette to hold paints, paper plates work good for holding paint and egg cartons work great to if no palette is available.

Palette Color Choices

Fallen leaves are pretty much in the warm color category, when you select colors for kids to paint, I recommend contrasting light color choices.

This will make the paint stand out really nice against the natural warm fall colors of leaves.

White always looks nice, pale yellow stands out, bright colors work great.

I like painting with warm fall colors so, I painted my leaf white first, my paint stand out and shows off my warm colors.

Classroom Tip!

If you are painting with more than a few children, it’s best to set-up each child a drying station.

Once they get started painting they may look similar and it’s hard to put each child’s name on them.

So usually before my students start painting, I set-up a dry station with newsprint for each kids. I ask them when they are done painting each leaf to place in their grouped area to dry.

This insures each child keeps track of what they painted.

Best paints for Leaf Painting

Remember this is a seasonal project and will only last the life of the leaf.

So safe non-toxic paints are perfect for this project.

Kids non-toxic acrylic will work best and last long.

Squeeze out only a quarter size of paint to start with, and add more paint as you go to manage mess.

I recommend thick acrylic and not watery type paints.

Watery paints will just drip off leaves.

Watered down watercolor paint will not work on this project.

Demonstrate simple strokes first so they can get a good idea how to paint a leaf gently.

I recommend using only small brushes for leaf painting.

I would use very small brushes like the first two in my picture below.

Leave the rest to them!

Try to let kids have fun painting without adding complicated instructions.

Kids painted leaves will look great no matter how they are painted when dry!

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