Leaf Learning Activities for Kids

There are lots of things you can do with leaves in the classroom and at home, and fun ways to learn about leaves as they start changing color in the fall.

Learn about different kinds of leaves and match them to their trees with this printable from Montessori Nature. It includes 10 kinds of trees and their leaves to match with. If you have those trees nearby you can also find the real leaves to match with.

Of course if you’re going on a leaf hunt yourself, you’ll want to save some of those leaves the kids find in their own leaf collection and identification books. You can learn how to make your own from Dappled Skies and DIYs. Or turn your leaf peeping into a sticky leaf scavenger hunt with this idea from Little Pine Learners.

There are a lot of easy art activities you can do with leaves, such as the classic rubbing (check out a tutorial if you need it from Laura Radniecki), complete a picture with half a leaf and learn about symmetry (like in this post from NurtureStore) or drawn in, on and around leaves to make fun art as shown in this idea from Artful Parent.

Make your leaves into people, paint on them or with them; there are so many possible ideas!

Trace your leaves, label them with what kinds of trees they came from, and then play a matching game like this one from Preschool Toolkit.

Early Learning Ideas has some great printables on the parts of a tree and a leaf, the life cycle of an oak tree and leaf sorting that you can find on Teachers Pay Teachers. Or check out the leaf investigation worksheet from Turner Tots.

Looking for more leaf fun? Check out these ideas for leaf activities that don’t use real leaves, and these that do. And let me know what your favorite way to play and learn with leaves is!

10 Fall leaf ideas [Recycled Crafts]

8 Fun Fall Leaf Math Activities

Cascading Fall Leaf Necklace [Jewelry Making]

Growing Up Ladybug and How to Become a Butterfly are both by Stepanka Sekaninova and illustrated by Linh Dao, and they came out at the same time and are on similar themes, so let’s look at them together.

Growing Up Ladybug is narrated by Mariella, a seven-spot ladybug. She talks about the parts of a ladybug, where they live, different kinds of ladybugs, why humans love them, their defenses against predators and the life cycle of a ladybug.

The drawings are cute if not always scientifically accurate, it’s not in such a way that’s likely to confuse kids (who probably already know that ladybug mamas don’t push their larval babies around in strollers, for instance.

It’s a good general description of the life cycle of a lady bug and why we like having them around.

About the book: 32 pages, hardcover. Published 2026 by Albatross Media. Suggested retail price $16.95.

Similarly, How to Become a Butterfly covers the life cycle of a butterfly, starting with caterpillars eating burning nettle leaves. (Here Amanda is the narrator.) The book talks about a few of the more than 18,000 daytime butterflies in the world as well as other creatures that live in the meadow (there’s that ladybug again, along with crickets, bees and other bugs).

It also covers some of the enemies of caterpillars like wasps and spiders, and the defenses that caterpillars use to try to prevent being eaten. It illustrates how caterpillars grow and change as they molt and prepare to pupate, and what a caterpillar looks like before and while it is forming its chrysalis. And while the book uses the word metamorphasis it doesn’t really talk about what happens between the caterpillar forming a chrysalis and the butterfly hatching.

This butterfly is a peacock butterfly, and once it hatches the book covers the parts of a butterfly and the life cycle. It also talks about nocturnal moths (though it says nocturnal butterflies are “usually called moths” when moths are actually a different species) and what butterflies do at night.

I’m maybe a little hard on this book because my daughter is a butterfly expert from way back, but it is still cute and good for the very basic basics of the butterfly life cycle.

Both books would be fun additions to your bookshelf for younger kids starting to learn about different animals or who have an interest in insects.

About the book: 32 pages, hardcover. Published 2026 by Albatross Media. Suggested retail price $16.95.

Have you read?

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