It’s Saturday! Are you ready for some tutorials! This one I found on Lampwork etc. is pretty cool. It’s an implosion bead. Sort of like the boro pendants you see with the implosions…but this is a bead. Thanks Mary Lockwood for sharing this. I made a couple of these just a bit ago to make sure I could do it. They turned out nice. I’ll post them tomorrow. You basically make a disk, add dots and melt them in and then heat the disk to kind of fall over on itself. But check it out for yourself. This tutorial is done with illustrations and I found it to be very straight forward. Let me know how your bead turns out. Now go make something!
Have you read?
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]