Little Leaves

Our assignment for this class was to create a leaf collage using wax paper and oil pastels. To motivate the students, the teachers first read the book “The Little Yellow Leaf.” After the story, the teachers prompted a discussion of changing seasons and different colored leaves while also discussing warm and cool colors.

To begin the art project, the students were asked to write their favorite fall memory on an index card. Then each student was provided with a piece of wax paper and three warm colors (red, yellow, and orange). Using a file, the students grated the crayons to create red, yellow, and orange shavings. When we had enough shavings, we folded the wax paper and ironed it to melt the shavings creating a colorful collage. Then we cut at least three warm colored leaves from the wax paper and pasted them on a piece of white paper. Next, we used oil pastels to draw cool colored (blue, green, and purple) leaves on the white paper mixing them in to create a collage reflecting a pile of colorful leaves. The photo to the left is my leaf collage.

An extension activity with this wax paper collage lesson would be in 3-5 grade science when students learn about the different planets in the solar system. Similar to our assignment, the students would grate various different colored crayons on pieces of wax paper to create different mixes of colored collages. Then the students would cut out pieces of the colored wax paper that have colors most similar to each of the planets (e.g. bluish for Neptune and Uranus; red orange for Venus and Jupiter, etc.) When the students have all the planets cut out, they would paste them in the correct order on a piece of white construction paper with one fact of each planet written beside each or their wax paper planets.