What to do with all those Pressed Leaves

Yesterday you made, or learned how to make, pressed leaves. So what should you do with all those pressed leaves? Here are a few ideas. If you come up with others, please tell me about them in a comment.

You could identify what kind of trees your leaves came from and create a colorful guide to fall foliage. Pick up a field guide to trees at your local library or bookstore. It's tough for me to recommend anything in particular because nature guides are usually meant for only one region of the world. A guide to Canadian trees would not be helpful in India, for instance. Look for one that helps you identify trees by their leaves. This will be best for this project and for future use since leaves are usually the easiest aspect of a tree to identify.

Next, buy a large photo album. If you buy one that has sticky pages when you peel up the protective plastic, you won’t even need glue. You can just stick a pressed leaf on each page. Write the name of each tree on a rectangle of colored construction paper and stick the corresponding name on the page with each leaf. If you want, you can even take pictures of the actual tree your leaf came from and add the picture to the page. When you’re finished, just stick the protective plastic back down.

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A very popular school project is to create a family tree. A family tree is a chart that illustrates how all your relatives are related to one another. What better material to create a family tree from than actual leaves? I would recommend writing the name of each member of your family on a rectangle of colored construction paper and placing this name plate on top of your leaf before sealing it between wax paper as you learned to do yesterday.

Once you have prepared all the leaves of your family tree, use glue or double-sided tape to attached them to a piece of posterboard. Use brown construction paper to create the branches of your tree and show who is related to whom.

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You may want to save your pressed leaves to make a holiday wreath. This is especially good for a Thanksgiving decoration but you can cut out some scary bats and ghosts and attach these as well for a Halloween door decoration.

Use a large, round bowl or plate to trace a circle onto a piece of posterboard. Trace a slightly smaller bowl or plate inside the original circle. Cut out your basic wreath shape. Use glue or double sided tape to attach your pressed leaves to the wreath shape. Hang and enjoy!

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