Friday, November 12, 2004
  
We had the privilege of having Megan over on Veterans Day. After she spent the morning playing Gamecube with the boys, we loaded up the kids and lunch and headed over to Sandcastle Park. We played for a couple of hours and when we got home, the boys still weren't ready to go inside. So, while they played, Megan and I raked/blew leaves into giant piles. Then, I had an idea. I got out our Playhut tents and tunnels and buried them under the leaves to make "Leaf Igloos!" It was pretty cool, if I say so myself, and the kids seemed to like them too. Anyway, since my blog about too many leaves I've discovered several things you can do with them--to at least make the abundance of them a little more bearable. So, if you have a pile of leaves in your backyard, try out a few of these ideas before you bag them up and throw them away.
1) Pick as many different kinds of leaves as you can and dry them in large,heavy book. (Talk about color, shape, size, etc.)
2) Once the leaves are dry, make a leaf book by pressing the leaves between two pieces of wax paper with an iron.
3) Gather some more leaves, this time picking ones that have neat designs,
especially in the spines and ribs of the leaves. Don't dry these. Instead,
make leaf rubbings by placing the leaves under a piece of paper and coloring
over them with a crayon.
4) You can make your own leaf tunnel/igloo even if you don't have tents and tunnels. Just find a small/medium box and open up both ends. Then, bury the box. The kids will have fun crawling through and hiding in the tunnels.
5) And of course, you can use more dried leaves to make pretty cards. Fold a piece of cardstock in half (or any size you want). With glue or tape attatch a dried leaf or leaves to the front of the card. Paint over it with a sponge brush
dipped in Modge Podge (available at Walmart). Before it dries, sprinkle with
glitter if you'd like. Takes about 30 minutes to an hour to dry. Even Denver,
age 2, could do this craft.
6) Pressing leaves in playdough is also fun and sort of neat. I bet, with some salt dough, you could make some pretty impressive ornaments--guess I just found another activity to try out.
posted by Shana # 4:54 PM 
|
