Leaf Works

After I picked the boys up from school this morning, we took the long way home to walk along the path by the lake. We started picking up leaves we found interesting and eventually collected 11 different leaves.

We brought them home and I taught the boys how to do leaf rubbings with a crayon or colored pencil. We each made 1 rubbing of each leaf and then made leaf books.



Being only 2, this was the end of the project for Caleb. He did about half of the leaves and drew a picture on the front cover of his book and signed his "C".



After we finished our leaf books, we mounted 1 of each leaf onto a big piece of cardboard leftover from a birthday poster and Aidan and I researched what tree each leaf came from. This is a great website we used that was very simple:

http://www.fw.vt.edu/dendro/forsite/key/intro.htm



We managed to find all but one of the leaves. I suspect that it might have come off of a small bush or other plant along the bank of the lake.

Aidan wanted to take the project farther and do some independent work so I put together some card work for leaf identification. I did 6 of the more common and interesting leaves we found.





I also set up his work space so he can continue to practice leaf rubbing and sort the rest of the leaves to match the poster.