Teacher Netta's Notes

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This week an art activity has made its way to our shelves! The outcome of this art project is a fall tree covered with red, yellow, and orange leaves propped up by a toilet paper roll tree trunk. The finished project is shown as the last picture in the post. This activity looks pretty simple, but in order to achieve a finished tree, many skills are needed. 

As you can see in the first picture, the children had to trace the top of the tree onto their green paper. This task is tricky because the kids have to hold the top stencil in place while using the marker in their other hand. It is also difficult to get the marker as close to the stencil as possible to create the same shape, but I was happy to see that everyone kept trying!

The next step, is to cut out the top of the tree which proved to be a great and valuable challenge. When I created the stencil, I made multiple bumps around the tree---it took a lot of concentration for the kids to use their best scissor skills to cut as closely as they could to the black line they drew. I kept reminding them that going slow and taking their time was the best idea for this situation.

After cutting out the top of their tree, the kids then used their fingers to shower their tree with fall leaves. It was easy to tell that this was all their favorite part! Using their fingers to paint the leaves incorporated their fine motor movement skills in order to create the look they desired. This painting part of the activity showed the creativity of each child since I did not put limits or restrictions on how many leaves they put on their tree, what design to put them in, and how much yellow, orange, or red to add. 

Finally, we will add a toilet paper roll to the bottoms of their trees which will act as the trunk. This will hold their autumn tree standing straight and tall!