Cork Printed Autumn Tree for Toddlers and Preschoolers
Looking out of windows we can see the leaves changing colour as summer fades away and Autumn hurries in – this week we’re looking at those colours of autumn and all the signs that the seasons are changing and we decided to get creative with some printing. This easy Autumn Craft for Toddlers and Preschoolers is great fun to create and make to celebrate the seasons changing.
Back in the summer after discovering the amazing Cork and Button printed flowers by Happy Hooligans we used the same method with fabric paints and created a tote bag as a gift for mother’s day. Printing with corks was so much fun that I have been collecting as many as possible to do some more printing with the kids and decided to create some artwork for the wall.
Check out some more simple Toddler Crafts to do together this year.
Materials needed for Autumn Tree Craft for Kids
- Brown Paper
- Scissors
- Glue Stick
- Black Marker Pen
- Corks
- Red, Yellow, Orange and Brown Paint
- Large sheet of White paper
How to make the cork printed fall tree with tots
Starting out we wanted to create a tree trunk – I love combining observation with our art projects (like we did with our family portrait collages) so we looked outside at the shapes that tree trunks make and T came up with holding her arm up and spreading the fingers out explaining that it looked just like her arm. Taking that as inspiration on the brown paper we laid down her arm and drew around it and then she roughly cut out side of the lines and I neatened it up from an oval into a hand shape as she wasn’t pleased with the way that it looked.
She then glued the trunk to the paper using a glue stick – we find that using a glue stick is much easier when the project requires more steps as it sticks quickly and forms a good bond to allow you to carry on straight away whereas white PVA glue takes a long time to dry and with preschoolers they get impatient.
I then quickly set up a dish with some corks of different sizes and the paint and demonstrated how to print.
She then went ahead and started to print dots around the top of the tree – it was a perfect opportunity to talk about the colours that she was using and the shapes that the dots were making as well as observe what the trees looked like out of the window.
She then noticed that leaves were falling down with the wind and printed leaves fallen down as well as leaves at the bottom of the tree.
It was left to dry and has since been added to our art wall as the pictures there slowly change from summer inspired art to autumn and seasonal celebrations.
Activities like this although creative give you opportunities to talk about other areas of learning with your children, we spent time talking about shapes, the colours and what happened when two colours were mixed together as well as observing why some prints were better than others.
More Autumn Crafts for Toddlers and Preschoolers
Ohhh, Cerys! I love it! What a brilliant way to use your corks!