Fall Craft: Little Scraps of Paper

Due to all of our projects, cuttings, and pastings, I've got quite the scrape paper collection going. I decided to take these scrapes of paper and turn them into the latest fall craft projects for the kiddos.

I traced and cut out a leaf shape from a table decoration found at Dollar Tree (yes, I get quite creative with things when I can't find exactly what I'm looking for in a store).

I went through our scrap paper and cut it into strips. Then I cut the strips into small squares (but big enough for little fingers to easily grab).

Cheap construction paper I nabbed at Walmart for .98 cents (in with the kids Crayola items, not the regular craft section).

I filled the leaf shape with glue and told the kids to put the pieces of paper on the leaf so it would be really colorful. I was almost anxious to see if the kids (all 2 and 3 year olds) would understand what to do and why they were doing it. We've been ready a lot of books about fall. One book in particular "Why Do Leaves Change Colors?" has held their interest (we read a few pages a day) so this craft went along perfectly with it.

They were very diligent workers.

Once all of the pieces of paper were on the leaves, I let them dry for a bit and then shaped the leaf again.

We still had lots of bits of paper left, so next up we did our colorful fall trees. I had my oldest help me draw the tree trunks and color them in (notice the extent of his coloring in).

Much like the colorful leaf, I controlled the glue (something tells me 2 and 3 year olds could be dangerous with a bottle of glue) and made a tree shape on the top, a few specks of glue on the sides (for leaves falling) and glue on the bottom (for the leaves on the ground). The kids perfectly followed my directions of: "put your pieces of paper all over the glue and when you're done, you'll be able to see your colorful fall tree." As their trees began to take shape, the kids got so excited and kept telling me "look at my beautiful tree! Do you see it? Can you believe it looks like this?!!?"
I love it when they get so excited about the projects I have for them to do!

We still had scraps of paper leftover, so Harrison (my middle son) created his own "fall thing. Kinda like leaves, but kinda not. Kinda like apples, but not really." Basically, I have no idea what he made, but I did give him full reign of the glue and bits of paper and was shocked to see that he did not make a huge mess (he's four so I'm really impressed by this!).

I was interested to see how the kids would do with the glue (they still got sticky despite me controlling the glue) and if they would actually get what to do (they understood perfectly). I use these kinds of projects/crafts to test their skill levels and what else they may be able to do for future projects.

These are great and simple fall crafts from the youngest toddler to even elementary age kids, who take the designing into their own hands.