7 Easy Leaf Craft Ideas for Kids

I thought I’d share 7 really easy and fun leaf craft ideas for kids that my children have enjoyed making these last few weeks at home. Leaves are the easiest thing to craft with at home as you need next to no supplies! These crafts are really easy to set up, they don’t need much equipment and you can make them with just leaves you find in the garden or you can pick some inspiring leaves up on your daily walk and use them instead. We’ve made these leaf crafts with kids aged 3-11 so there should be something for everyone here! There are lots of beautiful leaf art ideas for kids on pinterest but these are easy ones that everyone can do and lots more leaf craft ideas for Autumn leaves here.

Easy Leaf Craft Ideas for Kids

Leaf Story Art. Nature Craft Literacy

You will need……

• Leaves in a variety of different colours
• Paper
• Glue
• Paint (optional)

This is a great preschooler leaf activity or a nature craft idea that supports early reading and writing. Start by going out for a little walk and collect a wide variety of leaves – different shapes and colours. When you return home – lay all your leaves out and see if your kids can make up stories with the leaves, the leaves could become people or planets or anything that comes to mind! Older children can stick their leaves down and write their story around the leaves. For more ideas of Woodland Crafts for Kids – see this post.

You can expand this activity to use all sorts of other natural environment bits and bobs. For some inspiration – see these lovely natural pictures made by Aliex from HappyWildOnes (pop on over she has lots more ideas for nature crafts too!) You can find more ideas for Stick Crafts for kids here!

Leaf Art for Kids

Make a Leaf Butterfly

You will need……

• Sticks
• Chalk Pens
• Leaves

This is an easy craft to make with leaves and sticks. Decorate your leaves with crayons or chalks or chalk pens. We used these brilliant chalk sticks to decorate our leaves with pretty patterns. And then stick them down as wings with twigs for their bodies. Check out our post on Stick crafts for Kids.

Leaf Salad Spinner Art

You will need……

• Salad Spinner
• Paint in different colours
• Leaves
• Blu tack

You can use a salad spinner to make some super cool leaf art! This easy leaf craft is a real winner with our kids! All you need is a cheap salad spinner (unfortunately you’ll be unable to use the spinner again for salad!) You can get very cheap salad spinners from IKEA. Put a small bit of blu tack onto each of your leaves and stick them to the bottom of your salad spinner. Add blobs of different coloured paint onto your leaves and then spin, spin, spin!! You can experiment with different amounts of paint and whether splodges or dribbles work best! Kids love the action of spinning their leaves and it’s fun checking to see if they like the desired affect or they want to add more paint!

Magic Leaf Rubbing Craft Idea for kids

You will need……

• White Crayons or Candles
• Paper
• Watercolour Paints and Paintbrushes
• Leaves with strong veins!

For another leaf craft idea -leaf crayon rubbing is a good way for kids to learn about veins and the basic structure of a leaf. But to make it even more fun and for a LEAF ACTIVITY that is a little bit different – try rubbing the leaves (vein side up) with a WHITE CRAYON on white paper. Obviously you won’t be able to see anything! But the magic is in painting over the white crayon to reveal the leaf print. We found this works well with watercolour paint in dark colours – it shows the crayon leaf print in more detail. You could also try using a wax crayon for this leaf craft. For more ideas – try this leaf chromatography experiment!

Minibeast Insect Bodies Leaf Art

You will need……

• Lots of leaves in different colours and shapes and sizes
• Glue
• A book or internet to search for the anatomy of an insect – this book is a great one.

A great home learning task during this time could be to explore insects through leaves. Many schools have minibeasts on their curriculum and this craft is a great way of learning the structure and anatomy of the insect. You can also be inspired by the shape and look of real bugs, but recreate your own bugs that are not based on any insect and make fun imaginative ones instead! Stick the leaves in the shape of an insect body (or follow a real insect body shape from google images). Add twigs or sticks for arms or try using a hole punch for eyes.

Make a Leaf Lantern

You will need……

This is a fun leaf craft idea for kids that creates a beauitful lantern that can be used at night or as a decoration. It’s probably best suited for older kids as it can be a bit fiddly or younger kids can help to stick leaves on once the construct has been made. For the full tutorial of how to make a stunning leaf lantern, see the Leaf Lantern How To I’ve written here.

Autumn Leaf People

Here’s a really simple leaf craft idea for kids that preschoolers will love too, you can see the full leaf people making post here. But simply put, you just need toilet rolls, paint, leaves and googly eyes- kids will have lots of fun making their own leaf people!

See here for loads more leaf activities for kids!

Outdoor Activity Kit for Kids

If you liked these ideas you’ll LOVE our Holiday Outdoor Activity Kit for Kids! It contains 3 weeks of fully planned outdoor activities including….

• Games
• Science Experiments
• Nature Crafts
• Codes to Crack

Each week has an eco friendly theme where kids can learn about topical issues such as ‘saving the bees’ and ‘plastic pollution’. All the activities are suitable for kids aged 4-11 and it even includes ideas for family adventures! It’s like your own printable DIY Eco friendly Summer Camp for Kids! And for our lovely readers – we’re offering 20% DISCOUNT on all items in our ETSY Store – including the Summer Holiday Activity Camp. Click here for more info.