Leaf Activities That Don’t Use Real Leaves

November 8, 2024 by Sarah White Leave a Comment

The other day I shared some crafts involving fall leaves, but there are a lot of fun leaf-related activities that don’t use real leaves, so I wanted to share some of those, too.

Like these watercolor leaves from The Artful Parent. These are so pretty and would be great to make a garland or decorate the table for Thanksgiving. You could experiment with different kinds of paper, combine watercolors and crayons, use an eyedropper to apply liquid watercolors — there are lots of different ways to play with this one!

Because I’m a knitter of course I love any project that involves yarn, so this fall leaf lacing craft from Our Kid Things is right up my alley. The multicolored yarn they used is a lot of fun, or stick with fall colors. Either way it’s a great fine motor skill activity!

Using leaf shapes to make other crafts is a great way to incorporate leaves into the classroom without having to use actual leaves. For little kids this sensory painting activity from Kids Craft Room would be a lot of fun (I think this would be fun for some older kids and adults, too, to be honest) and makes a fun and easy decoration.

Of course leaf activities don’t just have to be crafts. Check out this great leaf matching game from Made to be a Momma. These leaves are so cute and after you’ve prepped the game you can play it over and over with no prep. Use fewer sets for younger kids and the full set for older ones.

You can also use leaf shapes in all sorts of learning activities, like in this fall leaf number tower activity from Fun Learning for Kids. There are leaves with single numbers on them that kids can use to stack cubes on in one-to-one correspondence, as well as ones that show dots like dice so kids can add up the numbers to build their stacks.

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Leaf Reading and Writing Activities

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Book Review: Little Mole Gives Thanks

One way to help teach kids about Thanksgiving and why it’s important to be grateful is by reading books, and Little Mole Gives Thanks by Glenys Nellist, illustrated by Sally Garland, is a sweet story about the value of friendship and sharing.

Little Mole has made a feast and invited some very important guests, but when they all cancel at the last minute, Mole is reminded that the most important people in his life are his friends and family. All the animals in the forest join together and have a feast, raising a glass to the creatures who are always there for them.

It’s a quick little story but it’s sweet, and the book also includes a little information about how you can plan your own fancy forest feast.

This would be a really fun thing to do with a preschool group. You could read the book and plan your own fancy forest feast, which could be a regular lunch made fancy by eating outside and making some fun decorations for the table or picnic area. Families could bring food or kids can help prepare a treat in the classroom, depending on how you’re set up.

I also love the idea of using a book like this to talk about the people who are important in our lives. Mole’s special guests — the school principal, a firefighter and the mayor — are all important people and worth being thankful for, but in our day-to-day lives, the people who are closest to us are really the ones who are most important and who we should be thankful for. But it’s easy to forget showing gratitude to people we see all the time.

And that’s really what Thanksgiving is all about! Giving thanks for those people who are important to us on special days, but on every other day, too. Little Mole Gives Thanks is an easy way to start those conversations with little kids.

About the book: 32 pages, hardcover, published 2023 by Beaming Books, suggested retail price $17.99.

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