Playing with Leaves, Montessori Botany Activities at Home

We've had an amazing fall season out and about, adding to our collections of natural finds. I thought I would share some of the things we've gotten up to. Both of our children (as do most) LOVE all things leaves. Fall is the most magical time to collect and experiment with various leaf activities. 

Leaves are one of natures most abundant, open ended creative gifts to play with. 

We played with many ideas, and here are a few. 

Below we used our flower press to press our leaves. This is not a sponsored post ~ we purchased our leaf press years ago. It's simple and fun to use, and so perfect for leaves. 

If you don't have a leaf press just grab some paper, or a pad of paper and insert your leaves between the pages. Pop a large heavier book on top, and wait for a few days to see the progress.

 It takes time for the leaves to dry. Our children checked their progress often 💗

This press has four simple screws around the corners. They are self tapping and do not require a nut on the other side. Ours came with small squares of paper, to place between squares of cardboard. We cut new pieces when we need them. We made the most of our space, by placing several leaves on a sheet.

We created leaf mandalas. One was by rubbing leaves with crayons. The next was probably our favourite! We found a good selection of multiples of leaves from our yard. We pressed these leaves  well. There were quite a few leaves, and the easiest thing to accommodate all of them was to use a water colour pad. You can use what you have. We used a canvas from the dollar store, and modgepodge to secure our leaves. This is such a beautiful fun piece to make!

Ava loves to play with leaves! I thought it would be fun to press and laminate some, in effort to lengthen their life for extended play and handling. This is a bit time consuming, but really fun to do. I clipped off any stems to make lamination easier. This works best with leaves that have been well pressed. I was sure to leave a good border around each leaf when I cut them out, otherwise they will pop apart. 

They also look amazing when held to the light 💚

Ava loves to use these on the floor. She can arrange to her hearts content, and take photos.💕

We have created and used a variety of print materials, and we have now made them available in our shop. Our favourites are Leaf Bingo, Memory Match and the Scavenger Hunt!💗 Our Scavenger Hunt  activity, is played indoors. We used a magnifying glass to find hidden leaves, inside our beautiful woodland photo. We also have a sheet of larger leaves to hide around the house, or to lay out on a carpet or table. I developed this version, because our daughter absolutely loves to hunt for treasures around the house💕 

We also love our leaf margins set. We explored all of our leaves that we collected, and tried to identify them.  

If you are interested in learning more about our materials they can be found in our Shop.

I hope you are all having a magical fall, should you be in the season where you are living💛