Leaf Rubbings

I set up this activity using the leaf rubbing plates I purchased last year from Let's Explore.  I cut up some small pieces of natural recycled drawing paper from Discount School Supply and placed them in a basket.  Then I chose 6 leaf rubbing plates and put those into another small basket.  Finally, I added a little basket of crayon rocks (also from Let's Explore) and a pencil.  The crayon rocks are perfect for this type of activity as they have a lot of surface area for rubbing.  Additionally they help refine and strengthen a child's pincer grasp.

  

To do this work the child places the brown paper on top of a leaf plate and rubs the crayon rock over the top until the leaf image is revealed.  I love how this looks on the brown paper.

Ideally it would be perfect to do this with real leaves.  However, with 60 children (over the course of a week) handling the leaves I haven't yet figured out how to make the leaves hold up.  If you have any great suggestions for how you've done this in a classroom setting, please let me know!

 

Comments

[Laura]

Thanks so much for the suggestion.
Take care,
Laura

To: directress@live.com

[Olivia]

I see you have gotten a number of comments on how to preserve leaves. We mount them onto clipboards with contact paper or packing tape. Then the kids can do rubbings by clipping paper to the clipboard. I use 3 different boards and 3-4 different leaves per board. Hope to help, all your ideas are really nice!

[Trish Wymore]

I used my laminator from Staples and heavy weight laminating film to preserve fresh leaves. The laminator seals the leaf tightly while the veins and stem are raised allowing for an excellent rubbing! I did this last year and when I pulled them out this fall, they were in perfect condition - even the color had been retained! We now have quite a large set!

[Laurel]

Thank you for the mention of Discount School Supply in this post! What a fun, natural activity for fall! Thanks so much for using Discount School Supply products.
-Laurel from Discount School Supply

[Plavixo]

I've heard of preserving leaves and even entire branches with Glycerine; either by soaking the leaves in it (step 8) or allowing larger branches to 'drink' it (step 7).

http://www.ehow.com/how_5454_preserve-leaves-with.html

Good luck!

[kym]

Thank you for your inspirational posts. We also do rubbings at school, but instead of buying crayon pebbles we make our own by melting down the little bits of crayon and pouring them into ice cube trays.

[Becky]

This is so funny that you posted this today because I added leaf rubbings to my first grade class today. I have the book Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf, silk leaves, one glass leaf shaped bowl for holding the silk leaves, one divided glass leaf shaped bowl for sorting the leaves (bought at a thrift store a few weeks ago for 50 cents each!), and a teacher made book of a few leaves and their names for identifying the leaves.

[Sarah]

Hi, I homeschool so I don't know if this will work in a classroom setting but I mounted real leaves onto stiff card which I'd cut into squares first. They make really nice "natural" rubbing plates. I blogged about it if you want to see :) http://www.sarahsellers.co.uk/blog/archives/2009/10/entry_870.php

Hope this helps ... I love your blog btw!

[Debmom4ca]

I know of a way to reuse wax crayons that would be great for this activity. Take all of the paper off of the broken crayons and put them into a muffin tin either all one colour or a variety. Place them in your car on a hot day and let them melt together. If the sun is on winter vacation you can put them in a very low over and melt them there. I would put them in after baking something and let them melt while the oven cools.

[Jennypher]

Thanks for your wonderful blog. Out of the many blogs I read, yours is definitely on one of my "favorites list". I saw this done with real leaves at our local science museum. They simply laminated the leaves using a lightweight laminating paper. You could have this done at your local "Lakeshore Learning" store if you don't have access to a laminator. Hope that helps!

[Maryanne]

I love the way you've set up this activity to make it feel very "natural".

I put leaves in between sheets of contact paper so my kids could play with them without them falling apart:

http://mamasmiles.com/blog/?p=822

It works really well, and you can still do crayon rubbings with them although I don't think it looks quite as nice. I also saw a blog post somewhere where they painted the leaves with mod podge - maybe that would work?

[Monica]

What if you ironed real leaves between pieces of wax or freezer paper?