Falling Leaves Diarama

This one was just for the twins, so we did it while M was napping. It’s a great refrigerator-hanging art piece. We finger painted leaves on the trees, so they had a lot of fun with it.

Things you need:

• Printed Falling Leaves Template (Link will open in new window)
• Construction paper
• Sandwich-size zip-lock baggie
• Hole punch (optional)
• Pencil
• Scissors
• Glue
• Markers, crayons, or paint

How we did it:

Cut or color - You can do either first. I cut out the tree shapes first so I could cut the square and hole punch the “leaves” while they were painting and reduce wait time. You could just go for being prepared with a bowl full of “leaves” before you get started.

Of course, whatever you did first, you do the other one second. We colored the trunks and the ground with markers and finger painted leaves on the tops of the trees. I have to say, I’m pretty impressed with the way they turned out. I used disposable pie pans for paint and color mixing.

Hole punch - Like I said, I did this while the kids were painting. I used red, brown, orange and yellow construction paper (one sheet each) and punched... really a lot of holes in them. I have a 3-hole punch, so I lined up all four sheets of paper and punched once, then slid the paper down a bit and punched again. Just keep doing that until you’re satisfied. If you have a one-hole punch, it will still work, but... I’m sorry.

You will also use the square part of the pattern to cut out a blue square of construction paper at this point. Again, unless you were more prepared than me and already did this.

Put it together - We painted, so I let the trees dry while the kids napped. Then, I put what seemed like a reasonable amount of hole-punched paper in two ziplock bags. I used freezer size because that was all I had. It turned out fine, except freezer bags aren’t quite as transparent as sandwich bags. Zip the bags shut.

Next, I used tape, circled sticky side out, (you can use glue) to put the pieces together. I taped the trees to the front of the bag and the blue squares to the back (only taping where the trees would cover it).

I probably could have let them use the square pattern piece to cut their own blue sky... they probably could even have punched their own leaves. But I imagine they would have gotten bored of that.