First, you will need a whole packet of colored construction paper. Try a packet with yellow, peach, pink, green, and rose colors. If you would rather have other colors, choose a palette of your favorite colors. Next, get out a good pair of scissors and a sharpened pencil. Put your paper, scissors, and pencil in a work space that you can work at for a few minutes once a week or once a day.

Now comes the fun part! Take a 5-minute to 15-minute walk outside. Enjoy the beauty around you, either in your yard or around the neighborhood. Breathe the fresh air and notice the plants. Visually feast on their lovely colors and forms. As you do, find a sample leaf from a tree or shrub that you and your student(s) particularly like. This sample leaf will be the template for your first decoration. Take the leaf back home. Now choose one color from your stack of colored paper. Set the leaf on one page of this color and use a pencil to trace its shape onto the page. Remove the leaf and cut out the template. Use this template to cut leaves out of the rest of the same colored paper. Here are three helpful tips to consider while cutting out leaves.

1. Often you can cut out two or more leaves on one page. Divide the page in half to do this.

2. After tracing the template, cut 3 - 4 layers of pages at a time so that you are making 3 - 4 leaves each time.

3. Here is another shortcut so that you won't have to retrace the template each time. Place the template on the top page of the stack of colored paper that you want to use and, holding the template in place with your thumb, cut around the shape.

When you have a whole stack of one color cut out, tape the leaves up on a wall, window, or around a desk top near your home school space. You can arrange them any way you like, as a border or as a picture.

This whole process should not take more than 1 - 1 1/2 hours. When done, stand back and enjoy your work. Then on another day repeat the process by taking another walk, find a different leaf to make a template and make another stack of leaves in another color. Then paste these up. Now you will have two different leaves in two different colors.

Repeat this process once a week or every few days until you have several (3-6) different colors and types of leaves cut out and taped up.

You may choose to start this project before the home school year starts or after. Don't even worry if finishing the project takes you six weeks. Remember just to work in little steps and enjoy the steps. When the project is done, you will be so happy, and you will be able to enjoy it for a long, long time.

If you don't have the time for the leaf search, or leaves are out of season in your area, you may also order our ART PACKS (Leaves). The Art Pack includes instructions and easy-to-use templates to make several types of leaves. All our Art Packs are inexpensive and fun to use!