Stamped Fall Tree promotes creative expression by letting the child use their own imagination and thought process. This craft allows the child to utilize fine motor skills in various art tools such as the colored pencil or painting tools. They are also learning what happens in fall - leaves change colors!
Supplies:
Newspaper or some material to place underneath white piece of paper
Wipes for your hands
White Piece of Paper
Brown marker or colored pencil
Brown, Red, Orange and Yellow Washable Craft Paint (any fall colors, please know washable craft paint works best but can use different paint too besides watercolors.)
Paper plate
Cotton ball or bundle of q-tips (4 to 8 q-tips wrapped in a rubber band)
Small clothespin
Activity Steps: Before we begin, make sure your workspace is all set up with all of your supplies placed on a flat surface. It is a good idea to lay some newspaper or any other surface covering down to protect the surface that you are working on as the paint you’ll use might be a little messy! If you need help opening up any of your paint bottles, make sure to have an adult nearby so you can ask!
Step 1: Fall is starting soon and in some parts of the world leaves change colors. Can anyone tell me what colors we see in fall? Orange, Red, Yellow and Brown. So let’s begin by closing our eyes for a couple seconds. We are going to imagine “what do I want my fall tree to look like?” Your tree can be small, medium or very big. Full of yellow, orange, and red leaves or maybe just orange and brown leaves with red apples.
Do you want your tree to be thin or thick? I’m going to make a big tree that is thick and full of all the colors of fall leaves!
Step 2: Now, you are going to grab your brown marker or color pencil to make your tree. I’m going to show you a trick that I recently learned on how to draw a tree. You are going to draw a line starting from the bottom of my paper to the top.
Once you have one brown line, you have the base of your tree. Next, you are going to trace the brown line from the bottom and as you're moving upwards you are going to draw a little further or shorter. You can move upwards by going to the sides, or turning your line in a curve.
You’ll want to repeat this step about 5 times or more depending on how you want your tree to look.
Tip: If you want your tree thick and with many branches, a fat marker will be great to use than colored pencil. Colored pencil is thin so you’ll be drawing a lot of lines to achieve that thick tree.
Step 3: Next, you’ll want to reach for your paper plate and paint bottles. You can squeeze your desired colors out on the plate.
Then when you have your paint on your plate, you’ll grab painting tools (clothespin, cotton ball, rubber band & q-tips) For the cotton ball, you’ll open the clothespin and close it on the cotton ball.
So as you're dipping the cotton ball in paint, you will be holding the clothespin. Also, if you don’t have a cotton ball you can use a pom pom as well.
For the q-tips, you are going to grab a rubber band and wrap it around your q-tips together so it makes a bundle. Now, you’re ready for the fun part!
Tip: Don’t squeeze out too much paint from your bottles, if you need help getting paint out the bottle ask an adult to help you. If you don’t want your paint mixing on your painting tools, it would be a good idea to grab several cotton balls or bundles of q-tips.
Step 4: Use your cotton balls, and bundles of q-tips as stamps in the paint.
What will you use first to stamp? I’m going to use my bundle of q-tips first to stamp red on the brown branches to make leaves. You can cover the whole tree or just one part. Maybe you’ll want orange leaves on one side and yellow on the other. But what colors can I mix? How would it look if I mixed yellow and orange ? I like to think that the q-tips are bundles of leaves while the cotton ball can be one single leaf.
Tip: If you like to make apples , you’ll want to use one q-tip to dip it into red paint. You can place the red apples as if they're falling from the tree or place them by the base of a tree as if they all came falling down. Remember the fall tree you imagined in the beginning can change. That’s the great thing about fall, the trees change.
Step 5: Lastly, when you're all done stamping your leaves on the branches of your tree. You have to let it dry for a couple of minutes. Take these couple minutes to use the wipe to clean your hand and clean up your space by putting away the paints. Throw out the plate and the cotton balls, and q-tips you used. When it’s all dried, you have a masterpiece of a fall tree that you can put on the wall or give to someone. If you give your art to someone, maybe writing a small fall message would be fun! What could you write? “Happy Fall!” Or “Leaves are falling and changing!"
~Made by Sarah R.