Submitted by: Rose Rogers, a homeschooler and art instructor at Brakeworth Jr. Academy in Birmingham, AL.

Objectives:

What You Need:

• bulletin board or large sheet of butcher paper blue & green.
• 2-3 sheets of copier paper per student
• 6 sheets of brown construction paper
• glue sticks (one per student)
• scissors (one per student)
• Crayons (fall colors)

What You Do:

1. Our objective was to create a fall picture for the classroom bulletin board. A tree with falling leaves was the subject to be created.

2. Create a blue sky/green grass background using the butcher paper, about 4 x 5 or what ever size you wish.

3. Give each child 2-3 sheets of copier paper. They should collect 3 types of leaves to do rubbings on the paper (use green leaves because their more pliable).

4. Have the underside of the leaf facing up and lay the paper overtop to get a well defined shape with crayon rubbings.

5. Use several different fall colors (crayons) on each sheet and fill each sheet completely and boldly with leaf rubbings.

6. Meanwhile, have two student take the brown construction paper, one black crayon and one brown crayon and fill each page with rubbings from around the classroom or building (this will form the trunk).

7. When the leaf rubbings are completed have the children cut one sheet into four squares and the other into four triangles (you can cut them as many times as you want to have smaller squares and triangles, but for lack of time we kept ours large to complete the project within class time).

8. The brown trunk paper is also cut into four squares and assorted thin rectangle shapes (you can also do triangles if you want).

9. These are glued onto the board to create a trunk and tree branches.

10. The TRIANGLE leaf rubbings are then glued to the green ground around the tree (helter skelter) to appear like fallen leaves.

11. The children then glue the SQUARE leaf rubbings to the top of tree. If you come up short in leaf rubbings just have the kids do some more.

12. The end result is a cubist-style tree using collage and rubbing. The background can also be filled in with other cubist creation using rubbings like birds, pumpkins, scarecrows, anything you want. It's fun and the results are unique!

Recommended Books:

Make Sculpture
by Kim Solga

Biography: